


Mobs, Thieves, and Mothers

by byericacameron



Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Alternate Universe, Blood and Torture, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Knives, M/M, Major Character Injury, Robbery, Shooting Guns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-21 07:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 27
Words: 50,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2459948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/byericacameron/pseuds/byericacameron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After escaping from a foster home that went from bad to awful, Kelly Abbott is desperate and robs a corner store for the money he needs to flee Boston with his foster siblings. What he doesn't realize is that the store is run by the Irish mob. </p><p>Finding himself with even more trouble than he started with, Kelly is shocked when help comes from the guy he robbed at gunpoint. Nick O'Flaherty should hate Kelly by almost any sort of sane reasoning, but instead he goes out of his way to find Kelly and his foster siblings a safe place to stay. </p><p>Kelly is wary, but hopeful. Nick is gruff but generous and the Grady family is endearingly eccentric. Is there any chance that he may have finally found home?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

For the first time in his life, Kelly fervently, adamantly hoped heaven was a lie.

If it wasn’t, that meant his parents were there. If his parents were there, that meant they were watching him. If they were watching him right now, Kelly might as well put the gun he held to his temple and end it now because it’d feel about the same as his parents’ disappointment.

But what else was he supposed to do? The first two foster homes had been okay but this last one? No food most nights, bad food all the other times. No heat in the basement where the kids slept even though it was winter and fucking freezing in Boston. Kelly put up with all of it until the night the guy had punched Kelly and then tried to push him backwards down the basement stairs. Kelly shuddered and stuffed the memories down.

After that, he ran. And he took the three younger ones with him. It had been necessary, but at the same time Kelly knew it hadn’t been his smartest move ever. The cash he’d stolen from the house lasted them a few weeks but now they were on the streets, starving, freezing, and at wits end. So when Kelly found a loaded gun abandoned in an alley near the foreclosed house he and the others were squatting in, he knew what he would have to do.

It had taken him a few days to pick a target, but then he noticed the corner store a couple miles away from the where he and the kids had been staying didn’t have a security camera anywhere. He paid closer attention then and worked out the employee’s schedule. There were six guys on rotation 24-hours a day. During the day they worked in pairs but at night, only between 3 and 5 am, only one employee remained inside. Customers came and went at all hours, but almost no one showed up in that pre-dawn stretch. Kelly reversed his sleep schedule for a solid week, watching the store all night to make sure he was right. And maybe, possibly stalling as he tried to figure something else out. Anything else. By the end of that week he was out of time and knew he had to move forward.

He almost threw all of his plans out the window when a new guy showed up for the shift that night. A redheaded guy, tall and well-muscled and, apparently, the quiet type. The guy he relieved stood at the counter talking to the redhead for over an hour and Kelly saw the guy utter two sentences the whole time. Three tops. Even though the guy on the previous shift looked older, the redhead felt more mature. Like he was the one in charge and not the other way around. The switch and his appearance at the store—I mean, come on; how evil would it be to rob someone on their first night?—it almost made Kelly back off. But the kids needed coats and boots and  _food_.

Gritting his teeth, Kelly pulled his hood over his hair, wrapped his scarf around most of his face, and jogged into the store. As soon as he stepped inside, he pulled the gun out of the pocket of his hoodie and aimed it at the clerk.

“I think you know what I want you to do. Find a bag, put all the money you have back there inside, and please avoid calling the cops or I’ll shoot you.”

The guy behind the counter stared at the gun for a second, like he had to double check to make sure he was seeing it right, before he met Kelly’s eyes and raised his eyebrows. “Are you shittin’ me, kid?”

Kelly flicked the safety with his thumbnail. “Does it seem like I am?”

“Do you even know where you  _are_?”

“What kind of question is that? I’m not asking you to perform Swan Lake, I want the fucking money! Of course I know where I am!”

Green eyes narrowed across the counter. “You don’t. You really,  _really_ don’t. Walk away now, son, because the kind of hurt that will rain down on you if I do what you ask will be catastrophic.”

Kelly laughed, the sound so harsh and hysterical it actually hurt. “Won’t be any different from any other day of my life, man. Now shut up and give me the cash.”

“Do you even know how to shoot that thing?”

You didn’t grow up hunting in Colorado and not know how to handle a weapon. Quickly, Kelly fired twice, once over each of the redhead’s shoulders. The cashier barely flinched and that rattled Kelly more than anything else that had happened so far tonight. Did he have nerves of steel or was this guy  _that_  accustomed to people shooting at him?

Keeping his voice steady and his shame out of his eyes, Kelly gave him one last warning. “Next one goes into your shoulder instead of over it.”

“Did someone put you up to this?” The guy asked the question even as he grabbed a small black duffle bag from behind the counter and opened the register. “If you’re a patsy for Novikov, I can get you out of it.”

Kelly huffed and shook his head, keeping his eyes on the cashier. “Unless you got a time machine hiding back there, nothing you can do will fix my life.”

Brilliant green eyes locked on to Kelly’s. His heart stuttered. There was no fear in this guy’s gaze. Curiosity. Empathy. Confusion. All of that, sure, but no fear. And no recrimination either. Even though Kelly knew this guy couldn’t possibly even get a clear look at his face, Kelly felt like he  _saw_ him. It was like this guy could strip away the clothes and the lies and the situation and somehow find Kelly underneath all of it. Like he understood.

Kelly needed to leave. Now.

“Zip it up and toss it over.”

The redhead zipped the bag and picked it up. It looked a lot heavier than Kelly had expected. “Last chance, kid. Walk away now and I’ll pretend this never happened.”

Dammit. That’s all Kelly wanted to do—put the gun down, walk out of here, and forget this night happened. But…

“I can’t.” The words escaped in an agonized whisper that Kelly couldn’t seem to stop. Apparently it was loud enough for the cashier to hear.

Sighing, the redhead tossed the bag and Kelly stepped back to let it land at his feet instead of risking an accidental discharge of the gun. Keeping his eyes on the redhead, Kelly grabbed the strap of the bag and picked it up. Shit this was heavy. Way heavier than he’d expected. What did the guy have in here before he tossed the cash in, rocks? Whatever the reason for the extra weight, Kelly couldn’t check it out here. He had to leave before the cops showed up. There may not be a camera in the building, but Kelly wasn’t an idiot. There had to be a silent security system of some sort.

He backed quickly toward the door, shoving it open with his shoulder to keep his eyes and the gun on the cashier. He’d barely cracked the door when the guy said, “Hey. My name’s Nick O’Flaherty. When the shit starts hitting the fan, come find me.”

“I won’t be around long enough for it to matter, Nick.”

All he needed was enough to get himself and the kids on a bus south to where one of them had a friend who would help. Where he didn’t have to worry about dying of frostbite while he slept. Somewhere far away from the memories of foster care and homelessness and what he’d done tonight to protect his foster siblings.

Using back alleys and shortcuts, Kelly made it back to the abandoned house. It was on the edge of a development and backed up to a small park, so Kelly and the kids had made a habit of coming and going through the back rather than the front to avoid attracting attention. They also stayed almost entirely in the basement where the few small windows that existed had been boarded up.

Before he crossed into the yard, Kelly knelt in a patch of moonlight and unzipped the duffle bag with trembling fingers. On top of the bag was some loose cash and coins, a couple hundred dollars if Kelly guessed right. Enough for the bus tickets and a couple of really cheap meals. It was what Kelly saw below those tens and twenties that made his blood run cold.

Stacks of twenties and hundreds, all of them bound with bank bands. There was way too much money here for a corner store. Hell, there was way too much money here for a  _bank_!

Kelly remembered Nick’s warning, his dire threats of catastrophe if Kelly went through with the robbery. Looking down at this bag, Kelly began to suspect that the redhead hadn’t even been close to exaggerating.

Oh, shit. Who the fuck had he just robbed?


	2. Chapter 2

“You want to explain this to me one more time, Nicky?”

Paddy’s voice was deceptively smooth and calm. Nick knew better. The guy was pissed. Seething under the surface. Rightfully so, too. Some idiot kid had just walked off with $250,000.

“He ain’t local. Didn’t seem to recognize Novikov’s name and my guess is he honestly had no clue whose store he was hitting.”

“So you’re saying he just got lucky and walked in with a gun on the one night in the last six months that there has been more than a thousand dollars in that store?” Paddy tilted his head slightly, considering Nick as though he hadn’t seen him before. “That’s mighty lucky.”

“I’m tellin’ you, I’d bet my life on the fact that he has absolutely no idea who you are.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that he now has a lot of something that belongs to me, Nicky.” A little of the razor-edge Nick knew always lingered under the surface of Paddy’s sociable demeanor began to show. “You know I cannot abide something like this.”

Gritting his teeth, Nick nodded. “I’ll find him.”

“Yes. You will. You let him walk away with my money and you’re going to have to fix this, Nicky. A trespass like this can’t remain unpunished.”

Yeah. Nick knew that. “I’ll find him,” he repeated.

“I know you will, son.”

Nick heard the dismissal in Paddy’s tone and followed the silent order, turning around and walking out. The two bodyguards outside Paddy’s office smirked when Nick left, reveling in the trouble Paddy’s golden boy had suddenly found himself in. Nick ignored them, exactly like he always did. He may have only been seventeen, but he’d been recruited by Paddy himself. Trouble or not, he was not in the same pecking order as these morons.

As long as he figured out how to track down the robber from this morning.

Today, Paddy had called Nick to the office below the hardware store he owned, a legitimate business that also allowed Paddy to get his hands on certain supplies that may have drawn undue notice otherwise. Nick worked odd hours at the store here and there when someone called in sick or Paddy needed someone he could trust to man a drop, so everyone here knew him. But they also knew to leave him alone most of the time. Which is why he was surprised when the clerk called out his name.

“Nicky, someone left this for you.”

Nick stopped and turned toward the desk. “Who?”

“No one I knew. Little girl. I figured it was one of your sisters’ friends or something, so I didn’t ask.”

Frowning, Nick took the smudged and tightly folded paper. The handwriting on the one side was shaky, but that was definitely his name. Nick O’Flaherty. “Thanks.”

The clerk nodded as Nick left the store. A couple blocks down the street, Nick stopped and unfolded the paper, curiosity getting the best of him.

“The cash minus about 5k will be in the duffle bag inside Boston Common near the corner of Boylston and Tremont. Be there at one am and I’ll give it back.

—K.”

K, huh? Curiouser and curiouser.

Nick smiled at the note. He’d been right. The kid hadn’t had a clue whose store he’d walk into. He must’ve figured it out, though, if he knew to find Nick here. Either that or he’d tailed Nick here somehow.

Folding the paper, Nick weighed his options. He  _should_  grab a few guys he trusted and hide them in the park to grab K when he tried to run. Mikey would do it for sure if Nick asked. That’s what he should do. But he already knew that wasn’t how it would play out tonight. He remembered too well the desperation in the kid’s laugh and the pain in that agonized whisper. “I can’t,” K had said. At the time Nick had thought it was because someone was holding threats over his head. Pain or blackmail or something. But now, with this note in his hand, Nick thought maybe that had been a different kind of desperation. The same kind that had made Nick say yes when Paddy promised to protect his sisters in exchange for certain…favors.

It wasn’t a hard choice to make. Nick would give the kid a chance and see what happened. He just hoped that his curiosity and his momentary compassion didn’t end up getting him killed. 


	3. Chapter 3

At exactly one o’clock, Nick walked into Boston Common. The park’s lamps were all lit, but Nick stayed to the shadows. The kid may have pulled an idiotic robbery, but Nick didn’t think he was actually stupid. No way would he be waiting in the full light of the lamps.

At the edge of the park closest to Boylston and Tremont, a ring of trees created a semi-secluded hideout. Nick stepped inside and waited, looking around like he was just here on a stroll. His senses were on high alert, though. He knew the instant K appeared behind him.

Turning slowly, he looked the kid over. He was shorter than Nick by a few inches at least and even under the baggy hoodie and jeans—the exact same ones he’d been wearing last night—he looked dangerously skinny. His face was even more in shadow tonight than it had been last night, so Nick still didn’t have any idea what he looked like.

K still had his gun, and it was pointed straight at Nick’s chest, but Nick was paying more attention to something else. The idiot kid wasn’t wearing gloves. Forget fingerprints—although that really should’ve been a concern for this moron. It was freaking thirty degrees outside tonight. Those two facts combined meant that if the kid wasn’t wearing gloves, it was because he didn’t own any. And if he didn’t own any at all, well… Nick was pretty sure he’d read the situation right and that coming here to give the kid a chance was the least he could do.

“Which note found you?” When K spoke, his voice was muffled by the scarf that covered half his face—the same gray scarf he’d worn last night.

Nick cocked his head. “There was more than one?”

“I left three. One each at the places people said you spend the most time.”

Huh. Smart kid. “So I guess you know who you robbed now, huh?”

K nodded. “It took about ten minutes to figure out once I started asking the right questions.”

“Why the hell didn’t you do that  _before_  you walked in with a gun?”

The kid snorted. “Look, man. Where I’m from corner stores are just corner stores. Asking which gang or mob a place is affiliated with isn’t part of my thought process.”

“But robbing a place at gunpoint is?”

Stiffening, K shrugged. “Crime of necessity. It wasn’t personal.”

“No. It was stupid.”

“No shit.” K grabbed his gun by the barrel and let the bag slide off his shoulder. Catching it with both hands, he shoved the bag away from himself like it was a bomb.

Nick caught it and unzipped the corner, checking to make sure most of the money was still inside. It seemed intact. “You taking some off the top isn’t going to sit well. You know that, right?”

“I have more important concerns right now than the wrath of a mobster.”

Nick blinked. The words should have been full of bravado, of fuck-all-you-guys attitude and invincibility. That wasn’t how they struck Nick, though. To him, they sounded like the words of a soldier right before he launched himself into a situation he knew was going to be suicide. It was how Nick had sounded when he’d accepted Paddy’s offer of help to keep his sisters safe.

“I won’t bother Paddy again. Tell him that for me, okay?”

Nick didn’t even have time to nod before K stepped backward into the shadows and vanished from sight. Cursing, Nick hurried to catch up with him, his heart racing when he thought about Paddy’s wrath and pounding even harder when he remembered the bleak look in K’s eyes. Even though Nick was only a couple of seconds behind K, the kid was gone. In the next clearing, Nick scanned the trees, looking for movement both at ground level and above. If the kid was here, he was well hidden and he didn’t have any intention of showing himself until Nick was gone.

So Nick left.

Or he made it look like he left anyway.

Hidden nearby, Nick heard K drop from one of the trees, muttering to himself. He watched the kid’s shoulders hunch and his hands dig deep into the pockets of his hoodie as he trudged west through the park. He never looked back so he never spotted Nick. K crossed through alleys and jumped fences and slowly made his way across the city with Nick not far behind him the entire time. Finally, he watched K enter a neighborhood and hop a waist-high, chain-link fence around a darkened house. It was a nice place with two stories and a huge back porch, but the yard was slightly overgrown and the paint seemed dingy, even in the dark. K bolted across the yard and jumped down the steps leading to the basement door, knocking softly and waiting for the door to open from the inside before slipping in.

Only when the door was securely shut did Nick follow. He sidled up to the house silently, pressing his ear against the glass-paneled door. A curtain blocked the view inside, but that didn’t do anything to muffle the sound.

“…leave tomorrow?  _Tomorrow_?” A girl’s voice. Young, but not young enough to be the little girl who’d delivered the note earlier.

“Yes, tomorrow.” Even through the glass, Nick recognized K’s voice. He sounded even more stressed now than he’d been at the park. “You guys have to get out of here now. I made a mistake and I’m sorry, but you guys will be fine because no one will ever be able to trace it back to you.”

“If you’re staying, I am.”

“The hell you are! You’re going to driving the car I’m picking up in the morning with Jack and Lindsay in the back seat even if I have to handcuff you to the steering wheel to get you there, you hear me?”

There were three other kids? Shit. No wonder K had sounded desperate. Winter had hit hard and early this year and there was no way K and the others were staying anywhere near warm enough in the basement of this house.

“You can’t do this alone, Kelly!”

Kelly. The name rang through Nick’s head and he held on to it tight.

“And you three can’t stay here!” Kelly hissed back. “Kiko, please.”

Kelly’s voice cracked and Nick felt the strangest urge to open the door and comfort the kid, put his arm around Kelly’s shoulders and promise to make everything okay somehow. But he couldn’t. He barely had his own shit together.

“Kiko, I need you to go with them because I need to know they’re all right. They’re too young to go on their own—no, don’t argue with me on that! Jack is ten, Kiko. Ten. And Lindsay is only seven. Are you seriously telling me you feel safe letting them travel all the way to Florida by themselves? They wouldn’t even make it onto the bus and you know it.”

“Kelly, I can’t…” The girl gasped and Nick could hear her sobbing.

“You can. You can and you will. You’re going to take the car and you’re going to take the money I’m going to give you and you’re going to drive them down to your friend’s in Florida because that’s what has to happen. None of you can stay here. It’s not safe. It wasn’t safe even before the—” Kelly emitted a frustrated growl as he cut himself off. “Whatever. Never mind. It wasn’t safe before and it’s even worse now and please, Kiko. I got you guys this far but I  _need_  you to do this for me. Please.”

The girl relented. “Fine. But as soon as we get the paperwork straightened out in Florida, I’m coming back to find your sorry white ass, you hear me?” The words were harsh, but Nick could hear the tears in her voice. Whatever else may be wrong in their lives, these kids were family to each other.

Either they’d moved away from the door or the rest of their conversation was too quiet for Nick to hear. It didn’t matter. He’d heard enough. More than enough.

Nick shifted his weight and inched away from the door, running back the way he’d come as silently as possible. He had to move fast. Had to. He had a shitload of work to do before lunch if the plan forming in his head had even the smallest chance of working. 


	4. Chapter 4

Zane’s family owned six dealerships and four maintenance/repair/body shops. His parents and his sister managed the dealerships, but Zane was king of his little grease monkey empire. He was the only one in his family who didn’t mind getting dirty, which was good because Ty spent 99% of his life covered in oil and axle grease.

Ty had started working for Zane when he was sixteen. First it was just cleaning and making appointments and whatever else needed to be done, but Ty would stay in the garage off the clock to learn anything the mechanics were willing to teach him. Within six months he was doing oil changes, another few months and he had taken over a lot of the smaller repairs. By the time he’d graduated high-school, Ty had wormed his way into a full-time, fully licensed position at Zane’s. What Nick had never realized before they graduated was that, the entire time, Ty had also been worming his way under Zane’s skin and into his bed. As soon as Ty had turned 18, he’d launched a full-on assault on the man. Zane had never stood a chance, really.

Nick held his breath as he knocked on Ty and Zane’s front door. They’d been living together for about six months now—since the day Ty and Nick graduated high school, basically—but it still felt weird to visit Ty here instead of at his parents’ house. There he wouldn’t have even had to knock. Here there’s no way he’d dare enter unasked. No telling what he might walk in on.

Someone fumbled with the lock and the door swung open. Ty peered at him blearily, blinking like he had to make sure he was seeing clearly.

“Shit. You have that look.” Ty sighed and shoved the door open the rest of the way, turning and heading for the kitchen. “Don’t say anything until I get coffee.”

Nick smirked and shut the door behind them, following Ty into the house. It was a nice place, Zane’s money and Ty’s shockingly good sense of style apparent everywhere. The whole décor focused on Zane’s various artwork, beautiful riots of color that he refused to put in a gallery for whatever reason.

“To what do I owe the honor of your presence at fuck-it’s-too-early o’clock?” Ty grumbled as he pressed the button on the automatic coffee maker.

“I didn’t actually come to see you. I need to talk to Zane.”

Ty’s eyes opened a little wider. “You in trouble, Nicko?”

“Only a little. I need help getting someone else out of trouble, though.”

“This sounds complicated.” Ty groaned and rubbed his plans over his face. “Oh I am not awake enough for complicated.”

“Ty, is there…” Zane shuffled into the room wearing pajama pants and no shirt. His eyes widened when he saw Nick and the running coffeemaker. “Uh, hi, Nick.”

“Z.”

Zane glanced between him and Ty. “Do you guys want me to go?”

“Nope,” Ty said before Nick could. “Apparently it’s you he wants this time.”

“Oh. What’s up?”

“This has a little bit to do with Paddy, so if you want nothing to do with it let me know now.”

Ty’s eyes narrowed, but he pressed his lips together. He and Ty had already had their arguments over Nick’s work for Paddy.

“Can we hear what the problem is and then decide?” Zane asked.

“Yeah.” Nick rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, trying to figure out how to tell this story without putting them in hot water with Paddy for knowing too much. There really wasn’t a way around it, though. For any of it to make sense, they had to know all of it.

“I worked a shift at the convenience store on the south side night before last. Someone was dropping off a payment, so Paddy wanted me to be there to pick it up.” Nick ran his hand over his curls and sighed. “About an hour after they dropped it off, some kid rolled in there with a gun and took everything.”

Ty and Zane both looked  _far_  more awake now.

“Are you—forget that.” Ty shook his head, grimacing at his own words. “Of course you’re all right. You’re here.”

“How much was it?” Zane asked.

“Two-hundred-fifty-k.”

Zane whistled. “If you came here to ask for money, I don’t have that kind of cash.”

“I don’t—” Nick cut himself off and shook his head once. “I told Paddy about the robbery yesterday morning and he told me to get it back. I wasn’t sure how the hell I was gonna do that because this kid isn’t affiliated. But _he_  actually found  _me_.”

“How did he find you?” Ty asked.

“I, uh…I told him my name and told him to look for me if he needed help.”

“You  _what_?” Ty gripped the edge of the island’s black granite countertop tight. “You told some kid with a gun who was in the process of getting you in a shit-ton of trouble with your mobster boss to find you if he needed help. Explain to me how that makes  _any_  kind of sense, O’Flaherty.”

Nick bit back a groan. He wasn’t telling this right.

“Just shut up, okay? Let me start over.”

Zane nodded looking as confused as Ty but less angry. “That might be a good idea.”

So Nick started at the beginning, explaining about the payment and recounting his short conversation with Kelly and Nick’s initial impressions. He told them about his meeting with Paddy and how there’d been a note waiting for him when he left the office. Since he still had it in his pocket, he even showed them the note. He told them what had happened at the meeting in Boston Common and how he’d tailed the kid back to the abandoned house in the suburbs. And then he told them the conversation he’d overheard.

By the end of it, Ty no longer looked angry, but neither he nor Zane looked any less confused.

“What exactly do you need then, Nick?” Zane asked.

“I need five thousand dollars. And either a car or a foster family that will take those kids.”

Ty rolled his eyes and moved away to refill his mug, muttering something under his breath about “white knight syndrome.” Zane, however, nodded.

“I can do five,” he said. “I don’t know how I feel about giving four kids a car to send them fifteen-hundred miles away into the home of god-knows-who, though.”

“What about your sister?” Ty asked. “Can she take the kids for a little while? Until we figure something else out, at least.”

“Maybe. Or your mom? I just don’t know how Annie would cope with four more kids when she’s still stressed out with the baby.”

Ty smiled. “Sadie is a handful. I’ll call Ma and see what she says. Chances are she’ll jump at the chance to smother the poor things with love.”

Nick had to admit he was right. Mara Grady was every bit a mother hen and a mama bear, adoring and protecting anyone she deemed family with loving ferocity. She’d done as much for Nick whenever he let her.  

“You don’t think she’d mind?” Nick asked. “Four is a lot to ask anyone to take care of.”

“Please.” Ty huffed and crossed his arms. “She’ll probably start adopting them the second I call her.”

He was right. As soon as Ty got Mara on the phone and explained the bare details of the situation, she started pelting him with questions and creating shopping lists and warning Ty that his bedroom was probably going to be repurposed and would he like her to send over his pictures and things?

After a few minutes of listening to this, Ty covered the mouthpiece and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, O. I think we’re good. Just let us know when, okay?”

Those words lifted a huge part of the weight that had been pressing on Nick’s chest since Kelly had walked out of the store the other night. There was still a huge chance that this whole plan of his would fall apart. There were dozens of things that could go wrong and so many ways this could all blow up in his face—especially when he went in to talk to Paddy—but he was trying. He had to try.

He didn’t really know  _why_ , but he had to try. 


	5. Chapter 5

Nick’s next stop was Sidewinder Security, the company Paddy hired out sometimes for the more legal covert work he needed done. They were good guys and a tip Nick gave them had saved one of their lives a while back. It was time to call in that favor.

“Nicky!” Eli grinned and stood up when Nick walked in to their open office space. Owen Johns was on the phone in one corner of the room and he raised a hand in greeting. Nick spotted Digger in the conference room with a client. “It’s been too long, kid. Is this a business or personal visit?”

Nick shrugged. “Both. I need to call in a favor, Eli.”

Eli nodded. “If I can. What d’you need?”

Nick pulled the empty duffle back out of his backpack and unfolded the note he’d placed in his pocket. “I need you to check these for prints that aren’t mine. You should find two other sets on both, but I’m looking for one belonging to a kid named Kelly.”

“First or last name?” Eli opened a drawer of his desk and pulled out a latex glove before touching the bag.

“First, I think, but I’m not sure.”

Eli nodded, frowning as he examined the bag. “What do you need on the kid?”

“Anything you can find.”

“All right. I can do that, I think. It might be tough to get a usable print off this fabric, but I might have better luck with the paper. When do you need it?”

“Yesterday? He seems young, so try the juvie system and the foster system first, all right?”

Eli smirked. “Always in a hurry for something, aren’t ya?”

 _Not by choice_. Nick shrugged, not knowing what else to say to that. Today, though, it was definitely true.

“Call me if you get a hit?”

“Course, kid. You be careful, all right?”

“Always.” Nick gave the guys a quick salute and gripped the straps of his backpack tighter. He  _hated_ walking around with this much cash on him. It’d be a relief to pass it off to Paddy.

This particular Friday, Paddy was checking in on the Italian restaurant (Paddy had thought an Irish pub was too stereotypical and obvious) he owned downtown, another place Nick filled in when necessary. Mostly as a bouncer or extra security on the nights some important “friend” of Paddy’s was visiting. It was still early so the place hadn’t opened yet and Nick was able to slip in the kitchen entrance without notice or fuss. He headed downstairs and almost laughed when Paddy’s idiot muscle goons tried to stop him.

“He’s busy.”

“He ain’t too busy for this.”

The guy practically growled. “Listen, kid. I  _said_  he’s b—”

“Paddy! Delivery you’re gonna want to take!” Nick called over the guy’s shoulder.

“Nicky? Is that you? What the fuck are you doin’ yelling at me through closed doors! Thought I taught you better manners than that.” The door swung open and the goon couldn’t get out of the way fast enough to avoid Paddy’s keen eyes. “They givin’ you trouble, son?”

“Only when they start thinking.” Nick smirked as he sidled past the glaring guards.

“Don’t think,” Paddy warned them. “That ain’t what I pay you to do. That’s what I pay  _Nicky_  to do.”

Paddy slammed the door shut behind them.

“Idiots,” Paddy muttered as he stalked to his desk. “I suspect you didn’t come to see me to discuss my staffing issues, Nicky. Got to say that I didn’t expect to see you again so soon.” 

“I told you I’d find him.”

Paddy’s eyes lit up. “That you did, son. And have you? Already?”

“Remember I also told you that I was positive he didn’t have a clue who you were?” Nick waited for Paddy to nod before he took off his backpack and placed it gently on Paddy’s desk. “I was right. He returned it all. He thought he was robbing a regular corner store. Thought he’d get a grand or so.”

“Oh to have been a fly on the wall when the boy figured it out.” Paddy opened the bag and glanced in, his knowledgeable eyes quickly calculating the contents. “It seems intact.”

“It is. Including the register.”

“Hmm.” Paddy took the bag off the desk and placed it next to his chair. “I find myself at something of a crossroads on the matter, Nicky. It’s a rare occurrence.”

“Sir, I think…” Nick swallowed and forced the words out, hoping it would help his case instead of derailing it. “I think he was trying to protect his family. He seemed like he was on his own—no one watching out for him—but he mentioned kids. Siblings, I think. They’re in a rough spot and I think he was desperate.”

“He put two bullets in my wall,” Paddy reminded Nick.

“It was an impressive display, actually. They went right over my shoulders. He was making a point, but I could see he didn’t want to hurt me.”

Paddy was silent for a moment, his face unreadable and his index fingers steepled against his lips. Sighing, he folded his hands and placed them on the desk. “What are you suggesting, Nicky?”

“I think he’s on his way out of town. It’d be best for everyone if we pretended this never happened. He swore he wouldn’t approach your territory again.”

“And you believe him?”

“He returned $250,000, Paddy. He didn’t have to do that. Most people wouldn’t.”

“It is definitely a point in his favor.” Paddy shook his head slightly. “Leaving the incident entirely unpunished reeks of weakness.”

“Who knows? I came to you directly after it happened. Did you fill anyone else in?” Nick conveniently left out the part of his day where he spilled the entire story to Ty and Zane.

Paddy’s eyes narrowed. “No one else knows yet. I had a meeting this afternoon concerning the—shall we say misplaced? The misplaced funds.”

“If no one knows and you have it back…” Nick held out his hands and shrugged one shoulder. “It won’t hurt you.”

Leaning back in his chair, Paddy rested his elbows on the arms and his linked hands on his stomach. “You seem to want to protect the kid who shot at you, Nick. Give me a reason why.”

So many things flashed through Nick’s mind at that moment. The desperately harsh “I can’t” Kelly had whispered at the store, the desperation in his voice during the meeting in the park, the absolute agony Nick could hear when he told Kiko she would have to leave without him. This was a good guy who was just trying to survive a world that had fucked him over.

There was only one way to explain that to Paddy.

“He reminds me of me, sir.”

Paddy nodded slowly, seeming completely unsurprised. “I owe you three times over, Nicky. If I do this the way you ask, it wipes one of those clean. Are you willing to go that far for this kid?”

Nick didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

“All right, son. Consider it done. I’ll pretend he doesn’t exist so long as he never interferes with my businesses again. You tell him that if you see him again.” Paddy’s eyes narrowed and he held up one finger. “One re-do. That’s all this kid gets. Not even for you will I pardon him a second time, understand?”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, Paddy.”

Expression relaxing, Paddy stood and walked around the desk with his arms outstretched. He gripped Nick’s face in his hands and brought his head forward to place a kiss on his forehead. “You’re a good boy, Nicky. Heart of gold, you’ve got. If I didn’t love you so well, I’d say it was almost a shame to see you down in the city’s underbelly with me.”

Nick tried not to think of how desperately he wanted to escape. Or how close he’d come to signing up for the Marines right out of high school. But his sisters had needed him and Paddy had needed him and now Kelly needed him. Maybe one day he’d be able to break free, but for now he was trapped in Paddy’s orbit. And, for once, he was kind of glad about that. No one else in this organization would have bothered helping Kelly.

“Thank you, Paddy. Really.”

Paddy grinned at him and patted his cheek before pulling him into a hug. “You did good. This turned out to be a good day after all, eh?” Laughing, Paddy released Nick and walked back to his desk. “Take a few days off, Nicky. Getting shot at deserves a mental health break.”

Nick smiled slightly and nodded, relief welling in his chest. That was perfect. It gave him the time he needed to straighten things out with Kelly.

“You know how to find me if you need me.”

“That I do, son. That I do.”

Nick turned toward the door, stopping with his fingers on the knob when Paddy spoke again.

“Tell your old man I said hello, would you?”

Nick shot Paddy a vicious grin over his shoulder. “Sure thing, Paddy.”

Saluting the two goons outside the door, Nick sauntered into the kitchen to talk lunch for seven out of the staff. He had plans and not a lot of time to make them happen. 


	6. Chapter 6

He dropped the food off at Zane’s and swung by Sidewinder. It had only been a few hours since his visit this morning and Eli hadn’t called him yet, but Nick was hopeful.

Eli spotted him when he walked in and, before Nick could say a word, shook his head. “Man, I told you I’d call you when I got a hit, so just—” Eli’s computer beeped and he laughed. “All right, Lucky. Did you rig this or something? No one’s timing is  _that_ good.”

“Nah. I was willing to wait.”

“Looks like you don’t have to.” He watched the screen, clicking various things and typing in short bursts. After a few minutes he sighed and muttered, “Poor kid.”

“What?”

Eli glanced up at Nick, his normally sunny smile nowhere to be seen. “He’s not in trouble with Paddy is he because I don’t know how I feel about handing someone like this over to him.”

Nick stiffened. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah and you’re rooting for the Yankees this season too, huh?” Eli shook his head. “Paddy may only use us for the legal side of his business, but we’re not morons, kid. We know who he is and what he does. Can’t  _prove_  it, but we know. And this kid? If what I’m seeing about him is true I don’t want him falling into Paddy’s clutches. With a history like this he’ll end up dead or in jail before twenty and, favor or no, I’m not doing it, Nick.”

Rubbing his fingers across his bottom lip, Nick shook his head. “It’s for me. I just pulled in a lot of favors getting him  _out_  of Paddy’s line of sight, but I want to make sure I’m reading this situation right before I cash in the rest of my chips. That’s it.”

Eli studied Nick’s face for a moment before he slowly nodded. “All right. His name is Kelly Abbott. He’s sixteen and his parents died a few years back. He’s bounced through foster care a bit, but not nearly as much as some kids his age I’ve seen. This place he’s in now, though?” Eli’s nose wrinkled like he smelled shit. “No way should this guy have kids. He’s got a string of petty crimes behind him but nothing for the last decade. Nothing he’s been caught for at least. But social services has looked into him and his wife a few times already. Each time they managed to convince them everything was peachy keen. I don’t like it.”

“Is there a missing persons report on Kelly?”

“Who’s missing persons?” Digger asked as he approached the desk.

Eli was already shaking his head. “Nothing. It shows there should be three other kids in the house with Kelly. Jack Harper, Kiko Duval, and Lindsay Park.”

“None of them are in that house,” Nick said. “They’re all holed up in an abandoned place down on the south side.”

Eli’s eyes hardened. “Doesn’t Owen have that contact in social services?” he asked Digger.

Digger nodded, his eyes taking on the same glint as Eli’s. “Hey, Johns!”

“What?” Owen poked his head out of the conference room. “How do you two get anything done when every time I see you you’re having some little chit chat?”

“You still seeing Riley?” Eli asked.

Owen’s attention sharpened. “Yes, why?”

“Because we may want to drop a hint for someone in her department to pay a surprise visit to this house.” He waved his hand at the screen. “Four kids who aren’t where they’re supposed to be and this asshole hasn’t reported them missing yet.”

“Because then he wouldn’t get the checks.” Owen clenched his jaw as he leaned over the desk. “I hate fuckers like that.”

“You and me both.” Digger crossed his arms and read the screen over Owen’s shoulder before looking at Nick. “You said you know where they are?”

“Yeah and now that I know what the situation is, I got a plan to get them out of there.”

“To go where?” Owen asked. “You’re one of four, aren’t you? I can’t imagine your parents would have the space for four more.”

And no way in any level of hell was Nick subjecting those kids to his father. “My friend Ty’s mom. She’s only got one left living at home and he’s a senior this year. Plus, she’s the mothering type. She’ll love to have little ones to coo over.”

“It’s gonna take a ton of red tape to make that even a semi-permanent solution, Nick,” Eli reminded him. “If we report them missing there’s going to be an investigation and they’re going to want to ask a whole lot of questions and check in hellaciously often. If the woman isn’t already in the system as a foster parent, that’s a whole other level of red tape to get through.”

“What’s her name?” Owen asked. “Maybe Riley can grease the wheels a little bit.”

Nick passed on Mara’s information—which he figured was okay since she’d already agreed to host the kids—and collected the information Eli was willing to give him on Kelly and the other three. One of the pages was a picture.

Apparently, Kelly had sandy blond hair and light eyes whose color Nick couldn’t quite pinpoint in the picture. His smile was small, a little sad and a lot hesitant, but it was still there. He could still smile. That alone seemed like a miracle after what he’d been through. Nick didn’t smile much anymore.

He memorized as much of the information as he could and left the building a little stunned. On the sidewalk, he looked at his watch. He’d barely slept in the last thirty-six hours or so, too focused on getting Paddy’s money back and figuring out this mess with Kelly. It felt like he’d done two weeks’ worth of work since he met Kelly, but that was only about thirty hours ago. Kelly had only been in his life for thirty hours and he’d managed to completely rearrange Nick’s world and get Nick to use up a couple of really fucking valuable favors. He’d done all that for a guy whose face he hadn’t even seen yet. Not in person, anyway.

What was it about this kid? Was it really only because he reminded Nick of himself in the way he was going to previously unimaginable lengths to protect people he considered family?

Maybe. That was at least part of it.

Whatever the rest of the answer was, Nick was determined to figure it out. Hopefully he wasn’t too late to catch Kelly before he disappeared. 


	7. Chapter 7

Kelly knew that he had to put his plan into action now, but the thought of actually walking up to someone and convincing them to hand over a car and the title to a sixteen year old was daunting. And how would he know for sure that the car was in decent shape? What if he packed the kids into the car and sent them on their way only for them to break down somewhere along an empty stretch of highway? They didn’t have cell phones so it wasn’t like they could call Kelly for help. Or anyone else. And, yes, maybe some Good Samaritan would stop to help them, but maybe it would be a cop who wanted to see ID or maybe it would be some creep who would be even worse than what they were running from.

There were so many flaws in this plan and that was what kept Kelly from walking out the door as soon as the sun rose.

Which was why he was still in the house when someone knocked on the door.

Kiko’s head popped out of the small room they’d been sleeping in to stay warmer, her dark eyes wide. “Was that the door?”

Kelly nodded slowly, his heart racing. “Get the kids. Go upstairs  _now_.”

She was moving before he finished the order, grabbing their hands and running for the stairs. They’d barely made it to the first step when the doorknob rattled and it sounded like someone was turning a key.

Kelly backed up and pulled the gun out of the back of his jeans, getting ready to protect the kids’ escape. They made it to the first floor a second before the door opened and two empty hands poked through the crack.

“Don’t shoot me, Kelly.”

What the hell? It couldn’t be. It really couldn’t be, but that voice sounded an awful lot like Nick. Kelly didn’t lower the gun. No way was he taking that risk. “You don’t want me to shoot, close the door and go away.”

“You shoot in a neighborhood like this and the cops will be swarming this place in minutes,” Nick said as he slowly eased the door open more. “You really want that?”

“Do  _you_? I’m not the one working for the Irish mob.”

“If you shoot me, I probably won’t care if the cops show up, will I?”

The guy had a point. “I’m not giving you the rest of the money, Nick. I don’t know how you found me but if that’s what you came for you can turn around and leave now.”

“That isn’t why I came.” He stepped fully inside the house, his hands held deliberately away from his body and his intense green eyes locked on Kelly. He shut the door behind himself with his foot. “I’m glad I caught you before you left.”

“Before I left?” How did he know Kelly was planning on leaving today? And, more importantly, “How did you find me? And how do you know my name?”

“I followed you out of the park the other night. And you left fingerprints on the bag and the note. I have a friend who owed me a favor. Had him look you up.”

“What is he, FBI?”

Nick shook his head. “Security consultant. Can we have this conversation without the gun? I’m kinda tired of you pointing that thing at me.”

“Lot of good it’s done me,” Kelly muttered, flicking on the safety but not lowering the weapon. “You’re like a bad penny. I can’t seem to get rid of you.”

The smirk on Nick’s face was entirely unexpected. It lit up his eyes, even from across the room, and it made him look younger—closer to Kelly’s age than he’d thought. “Just hear me out, okay? Then decide if you want to shoot me.”

Kelly considered his options for a moment before nodding and lowering the gun. He didn’t put it away and he kept his fingers ready to move to the trigger, but it was no longer aimed at Nick’s chest.

“Thanks.”

“Just don’t make me regret it.” Kelly took a breath and rubbed his face with one hand. “What do you want, Nick?”

“To take you guys to lunch.”

Kelly’s hand dropped. He stared across the room, waiting for the smirk or the laugh or the whatever that would make that statement a joke. Nick looked completely serious. “What?”

“I want to take you to lunch. You look like you could use some food and the other three probably do too.”

Kelly fought the urge to wrap his arms around himself to hide from Nick’s observant gaze. He knew how much weight he’d lost, but that was what happened when you gave up most of your meals to other people. He’d always had a quick metabolism and eating so little every day had dropped him down to nearly skeletal. But Nick’s offer seemed too good to be true. Which meant either it was an outright lie, it was a trap, or there was some kind of caveat Nick hadn’t mentioned yet.

Better to find out what that was now. “What’s the catch? Is this some kind of setup to get me to Paddy’s?”

“No.”

“And I should just take your word for that? Because it seems like it’d be a stupid idea for you to be seen in public with me.”

“Why? No one but me knows who you are or what you look like.”

Kelly raised one eyebrow. “You expect me to believe you didn’t tell Paddy?”

“I told him what I saw that first night, but that description fits a couple thousand people in this town, Kelly. Short, white, and wearing a hoodie.” Nick shrugged. “I didn’t have much to go on when I told him what happened.”

“And you didn’t fill him in after?”

“After, I’d already figured out why you did it and you’d already promised to return the money. I had no reason to put you in his crosshairs.”

“Except for the fact that I’d robbed you at gunpoint and shot at you twice.”

Chuckling, Nick rubbed his hand over his mouth. “Wasn’t the first time. For either. You were a lot nicer about it than pretty much anyone else.”

“That…” Kelly huffed a laugh. “That is the strangest thing I think anyone has ever said to me.”

“Maybe, but it’s true. I took care of the money you skimmed from Paddy and I have an idea for a safe place for you and the kids. All I want is to get you guys some food and have you hear me out, okay?”

“You…you  _what_? You ‘took care’ of five thousand dollars?” Since his parents died, no one had even taken care of a new pair of shoes with so little effort or griping as Nick had apparently taken care of five thousand dollars. It didn’t make sense.

“I got a loan from a friend of mine whose family has some cash to burn,” Nick said, his shoulders rolling in a quasi-shrug like that kind of gesture meant nothing.

But it meant everything to Kelly.

“Why are you doing this?” Kelly had to know. Had to. This was like some fucked up version of Cinderella and it  _didn’t make any sense_.

“It doesn’t matter.” His lips tightened and Kelly could see he didn’t want to say anything else, but that wasn’t acceptable in this situation. Kelly  _needed_ a why he could understand. Before he could risk the kids’ safety on this chance, he needed to understand.

“Yes. It does. Nick, please. Why are you doing this?”

Nick took a breath—a far longer and deeper breath than seemed necessary. Only then did Kelly notice the very slight tremor in his hand or how tight his jaw was. “Because,” he said through gritted teeth. “Because my life is fucked beyond repairing and I saw a chance to fix it for you and I wanted to do it because then at least I know things worked out for _someone_ in the end.”

“Why fucked?” Nick had friendships that would survive a loan of five thousand dollars and he had mob ties. Though, wait. He had  _mob_  ties. “Because of Paddy?”

Nick shook his head. “Paddy was my way out.”

“Home, then?” Kelly’s chest tightened when Nick nodded. He’d heard so many horror stories from other kids in the system even before he lived his own version of it. “How bad was it?”

His eyes went steely. “Bad enough that the  _mob_  was the way out.”

“Fair enough.” Kelly bit his lip and considered his options. He had the car plan, which maybe he could pull off since Nick took care of the money he owed Paddy. There was the possibility of the bus, which probably wouldn’t let any of them onboard without parental permission they couldn’t get. And then there was Nick and whatever plans he had up his sleeve.

All Kelly had were bad ideas. Right now Nick was the best bad idea he had.

“If this is anything but on the level, I will put a bullet in you,” Kelly warned.

Nick nodded, slipping his hands in his pockets and relaxing a little more when Kelly put the gun back in the waistband of his jeans.

“Stay here. I need to explain things to the kids.”

“Sure. Just don’t disappear on me.”

Kelly rolled his eyes. “Where the fuck do I have to disappear to?”

Nick frowned, but didn’t respond. Still nervous about this whole situation, Kelly backed toward the stairs, climbing them backward until he reached the landing and opened the door to the kitchen.

The house had been nice once, but dust covered almost everything and there were gaping holes where the appliances used to be. Kelly ignored all of that and headed upstairs, knowing Kiko would have taken the kids to the attic. It took a few tries to pull the ladder down from the hatch in the ceiling, but Kelly finally managed it. Before he started up, he called out, “Marco?”

“Polo,” came the soft reply from Jake.

He made sure the gun wasn’t about to slip from its place at the small of his back and practically ran up the ladder, nerves giving him energy he hadn’t had an hour ago. When he reached the top, three scared sets of eyes watched him carefully.

“Who was it?” Kiko asked.

“It was someone I met the other night. He…he figured out that I was in trouble and he wants to help us.”

“No one wants to help us,” Lindsay scoffed.

Kelly winced at the bone-deep bitterness in the little girl’s voice. “I think Nick does. He’s already done a lot to help me and he might be able to help all of us. He wants to take us to lunch.”

“Cheeseburgers?” Jack asked hopefully.

“I don’t know. Maybe. Are you guys willing to give him a chance?”

Kiko moved closer, keeping her voice quiet. “Is this the same Nick? From…”

She trailed off, but Kelly could filled in the blanks. “Yeah.”

“And you’re trusting him?” Her skepticism was almost tangible.

“Yes.” He had to. No one else was lining up to give Kelly food or a chance at a warm bed.

Kiko stared at Kelly for a moment, gauging his level of commitment to that statement. Finally she nodded. “I could eat.”

“I want pizza,” Lindsay demanded, arms crossed.

“Sweetie, when someone else is giving you free food you take it and say thank you unless you’re deathly allergic to that mess, you hear me?” Kiko said before Kelly could respond.

Lindsay narrowed her brown eyes at Kiko, but nodded grudgingly. Kelly swallowed a sigh of relief. It usually took longer to talk Lindsay down from her very firm opinions. Hunger was a cruel motivator.

“Before we go, I need you guys to promise me a few things, okay?”

Three very serious children nodded carefully.

“I need you to be good and polite, but careful. Don’t tell anyone anything they don’t have to know, okay?” Kelly took a deep breath and added one more caveat. “And if I tell you to run, you  _run_. You don’t look back, you don’t ask questions, and you don’t leave each others’ sides. You run until you find somewhere safe to hide. Promise?”

They all nodded again, but Kelly needed to hear it. “Promise?” he asked again.

“Promise, Kelly,” they said in quasi-unison.

“All right. Let’s go, then.”

He took Jack’s hand and helped him down the ladder, leading the others back to the basement. Kelly searched or Nick as soon as he could see in to the basement and spotted him almost exactly where Kelly left him. He’d moved back a little, leaning against the wall with his ankles crossed and his hands in his pockets. He looked perfectly at ease in the cold room, like he was fine with waiting all afternoon if that’s what Kelly made him do.

It was weird. Kelly wasn’t sure how to handle it.

“Guys, this is Nick,” Kelly said as Nick straightened off the wall and took a step toward them. “He’s gonna take us to lunch.”

Nick smiled. “It’s nice to meet you guys.”

“Nick, this is Jack, that’s Lindsay, and this is Kiko.”

“Grab your things and let’s go,” Nick said, still smiling. It seemed only the tiniest bit forced. “It’s a little bit of a walk to my car, but we should be able to carry everything between the five of us, huh?”

It took them all of five minutes to grab their things and Nick didn’t need to help at all. Each of them only had a single backpack. When Nick saw that he frowned, creases appearing around his eyes and across his forehead, but he kept his comments to himself. Kelly almost wanted to hug him for that.

“Ready?” Nick asked once they were lined up near the door.

Kelly nodded and forced a smile, making sure it was solid and steady and cheerful for the others’ sake. He just hoped following Nick’s lead wouldn’t be the biggest mistake of his life. 


	8. Chapter 8

Kelly expected fast food or, if Nick was feeling  _really_ generous, a restaurant. What he got instead was a quiet neighborhood on the north end of town and a cottage-like two-story house.

“Where are we?” Kelly asked. He wasn’t sure he was willing to walk into someone else’s house wearing clothes that hadn’t seen a washing machine in weeks.

“The friend I was telling you about?”

“The 5k friend?” Kelly just wanted to make sure he was keeping everything straight.

“Yeah. This is his house. He’s dating my best friend and they live here.” Nick got out of the car. “You can leave your bags in here if you want.”

Jack clutched his backpack tighter even though Kelly was already shaking his head. “It’s not like it’s much to carry.”

One thing Nick definitely was  _not_ was stupid. Nick hummed and Kelly could tell he knew the real reason none of them wanted to leave anything in the car—because they wanted everything with them in case they had to run. Wisely, Nick didn’t comment.

The door opened before they made it to the porch and Kelly blinked as one of the tallest guys he’d ever met in person smiled at Nick. He had to be at least four inches taller than Nick and Nick already towered over Kelly.

“Heya, Z,” Nick said, pulling the dark-haired giant into a hug.

“Ty’s setting the table,” he told Nick as he patted his back. “You gonna introduce me or what?”

“Zane, this is Kelly, Kiko, Jack, and Lindsay.” Nick points out each person as he names them. “Guys, this is Zane Garrett.”

 _The guy who is apparently well off enough to lend his friends 5k on the fly_ , Kelly thought.

“Thank you for having us,” Kelly said as he shook Zane’s hand. “I’m sorry we’re…” He trailed off, not sure what to say. Sorry we’re filthy? Sorry we smell like B.O. and a dumpster? Sorry we’re poor and really fucking down on our luck right now?

Zane just waved the apology off. “I figure food is a little more important, but I do have some spare clothes and a couple of showers if you guys want to use them.”

Behind Kelly, Kiko sighed longingly. Kelly forced a smile. “That’s really nice of you,” he said, neither accepting the offer nor denying it. He thought that seeing how lunch went first was the smarter idea.

“Are you coming in or what?” a voice called from inside the house. “You’re letting all the heat out!”

“Shut it, Tyler!” Nick called even as he nodded his head toward the open door, indicating for Kelly to walk through.

Tyler? Kelly hadn’t been sure if Nick’s best friend would turn out to be a girl or a guy with a name like Ty—could have easily gone either way—but the person standing at the other end of the entryway was most definitely male. Dark haired like Zane and almost as tall, Ty was over six feet of solid muscle. When he moved across the foyer, he didn’t walk, he stalked. Like a large cat. The ferocious ones. With lots of teeth.

“You shut it, Lucky. As in the door. Quickly. Before I hurt you.” The harsh words didn’t hold much threat. Even Kelly could see the laugh lines around Ty’s eyes.

“Play nice or I tell your mama, Ty,” Nick warned.

“He’s no fun anymore.” Ty puffed out his bottom lip in an exaggerated pout and rested his chin on Zane’s shoulder.

“I know, doll.” Zane reached back, automatically finding Ty’s hip and patting it gently, the motion and the words obviously placating his boyfriend.

“Pft. Jackass.” Ty muttered the words and then completely contradicted them by pressing a quick kiss to Zane’s throat. Turning to Kelly, Ty eyed him suspiciously. “So. You’re him, huh?”

Kelly had the very distinct feeling of being weighed and found wanting. He didn’t like it.

“You’re not  _that_  short,” Ty said before Kelly could respond. “Nicko, you said he was short. I thought you were talking, like…his height.” He waved his hand toward Jack.

Nick heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Shut up, Tyler.”

Ty smirked and then laughed, shaking his head. “You’ve always been too easy, man. C’mon, kids. Food’s this way. Ya’ll ain’t allergic to anything are you?”

Kelly shook his head. “Nothing serious that I know of.”

Nodding, Ty led them into the next room where a massive dark-wood table was filled to bursting with trays of food. Kelly’s mouth watered just looking at it all. Spaghetti Bolognese, individual pizzas piled high with meat and cheese, chicken piccata, and a bunch of other dishes Kelly couldn’t even name offhand.

“Pizza!” Lindsay cried. “Kelly, can I have the pizza?”

“Sure, sweetheart,” Nick said before Kelly could. He picked Lindsay up and carried her around the table, depositing her in one of the chairs with a flourish that made her laugh.

Kelly’s heart almost stopped. Lindsay had  _laughed_.

“One pizza coming up.” Nick picked up the plate with the pizza and placed it in front of Lindsay, cutting the pieces into eighths instead of fourths to make it easier for her to eat.

“Kelly, can I have pizza too?” Jack asked quietly. He’d stayed close to Kelly since they’d approached the house and he was practically standing on Kelly’s toes now. The kid was one sudden noise away from latching on to Kelly’s leg and never letting go.

Kelly scanned the table to make sure another pizza was there before he said, “Course, kiddo. C’mon. You can sit next to me.” He moved around the table and took the chair next to Lindsay, pulling out the third seat on that side for Jack. Placing the second pizza in front of Jack, Kelly scanned the other options in front of him. The spread seemed too much. Unreal. Like a desert mirage. Maybe this whole thing was actually a dream. A really nice dream.

Under the cover of the table, Kelly pinched himself. It hurt and nothing around him changed.

Not a dream, then. Somehow this wasn’t a dream.

“Have a preference?” Nick leaned slightly over Kelly’s chair and the words were soft, almost whispered in Kelly’s ear. He shivered, not quite sure why he was suddenly uncomfortable. Nerves? It didn’t feel like it. Something else…

Blindly, Kelly picked up the closest plate, not caring what was on it. Pretty much anything on this table would be better than every single meal in the last six months combined.

Having learned his lesson the hard way a few weeks ago, Kelly ate his spaghetti slowly, steadily working through the massive serving. While he ate he listened to Zane and Ty bicker about the auto repair shop they apparently ran. They shot barbs at each other like arrows but Kelly never felt like he was witnessing an actual argument. He heard the words but he also caught the hidden smiles and the pet names and the ridiculously moony looks they sent each other when they thought no one was paying attention. Nick joined in the conversation every so often, but mostly he sat back, ate, and watched, observing everything just like Kelly was doing. It seemed Kelly’s impression of him from before the robbery was right. He wasn’t a chatterbox by any stretch of the imagination.

The food was delicious, but by the time Kelly got a fourth of the way through he felt like his stomach was on the verge of exploding. Kiko had already put down her fork and Lindsay had started picking pepperonis off her pizza and just eating those. Jake was staring at his pizza like it had offended him, determination in his eyes.

“Don’t overdo it,” Kelly whispered to him. “Maybe it would be better to take it with us for later anyway, huh?”

Relief flashed across his face and he nodded, sitting back in the chair.

“Why don’t you guys come with me?” Nick put his napkin on the table and stood, beckoning to the kids. “We picked up some clothes that I think might fit. I can show you those and the showers and then maybe when you’re changed we can see about digging the chocolate cake out of the fridge.”

“Cake?” Lindsay perked up so quickly Kelly almost thought she levitated for a moment. “Is there really cake?”

“Yup. Cake. I don’t lie about cake.” Nick ushered them out of the room, glancing back at Kelly and winking before he disappeared from view.

“He likes to pretend he’s a hardass,” Ty murmured as he stood up and started clearing the table. “But I’ve never seen anyone more determined to help the underdog than Nick.”

“I really don’t understand why he’s doing any of this,” Kelly admitted. He got up to help, needing to do something with his hands.

“I’ve only known Nick for a couple of years because of this one,” Zane said, flicking his boyfriend on the side of the head, “but he’s good people. One of the most honest guys I’ve ever met. Which is kind of shocking when you consider the world he’s wrapped himself up in.”

“Aww, are you finally admitting you might like us, old man?” Ty teased.

“Old man,” Zane muttered, rubbing the back of his neck with one hand as they all stopped in the kitchen near the sink. “You make me feel like an old man sometimes.”

“How old  _are_  you?” Kelly couldn’t bite down the question any longer.

“Twenty-six,” Zane answered with a slight smirk. Kelly got the sense that Zane already knew where this conversation was headed.

Kelly went there anyway. “What are you doing hanging around with a bunch of teenagers?”

Ty grunted, obviously annoyed, but the smile on Zane’s face got broader. “Kid, I ask myself that  _every day_.”

“Careful, darlin’,” Ty warned, his voice going slightly growly. “This teenager practically runs that shop of yours.”

“And never lets me forget it, either.” Zane rolled his eyes before gazing fondly at his boyfriend.

“Damn straight.”

“How long have you two been together?”

“Since earlier this year. A few weeks after I turned eighteen.” The smug smirk on Ty’s face told Kelly a lot about how that particular courtship went down.

Zane shrugged. “When Ty is on a mission, give in or get the fuck out of his way.”

“You gave in?” Kelly asked.

“He wasn’t given the second choice,” Ty said.

In the lull that followed Ty’s declaration, Kelly wondered how much more surreal this day could get before it ended. Seemed like Nick on a mission was at least as fearsome as Ty apparently was. Maybe that was one of the reasons they were friends.

“How much has Nick told you?” It was Ty’s words as much as the sudden gentle wariness in his tone that set Kelly on guard.

Stiffening, he pulled back a little. “About what?”

“About this whole plan he’s got spinning in his Irish brain,” Ty said, waving his hand in a circle in front of himself.

“Oh.” Kelly relaxed a little and shrugged. “He said something about finding a place for the kids, but I don’t know. It’s…it’s not that simple, you know?”

Ty nodded. “A fact of which he is well aware. My parents live not too far from here, north a little farther out of the city. They got a bunch of land and space enough if you guys don’t mind squishing a bit. I already talked to Ma about it and she’d love to have you if you wanted to give it a shot.”

“All of us?” A place for two of them would have been amazing. A house willing to take in  _four_  kids? Kelly hadn’t thought that was possible. Even when he was still holding on to the plan of going to Florida to find Kiko’s friend, he figured he would have to leave the girls there and find another option for him and Jack. This? This really was too good to be true.

“What have you been telling him, Tyler? He looks like he’s about to faint.” Nick’s words could have been teasing, but the expression on his face was far too serious for that.

“I was trying to fill him in since  _you_  didn’t tell him anything. Did you give him a choice at all or just throw his ass in the car and drag him up here?”

Kelly crossed his arms. “Nobody drags me anywhere.”

Nick nodded. “Kid knows how to handle a firearm. If he never points one at me again I’ll consider myself lucky.”

“You are lucky, Lucky.” Ty said it automatically, like it was an ingrained reaction, before he suddenly blinked. “Wait…  _again_? How many times have you pulled a gun on him?”

“Three so far,” Kelly said. “We’ll have to see how the rest of the day goes. Might make it to four.”

Zane laughed. “I can see why you like this kid, Nick.”

“Yeah he’s a charmer, ain’t he?” Nick shook his head, suppressing a smile. “Seriously, Ty. What’d you say to scare him while I was gone?”

Ty opened his mouth, but words spilled out of Kelly’s mouth before Ty could say a thing.

“No one is gonna take four of us. One, sure. Two, maybe. But  _four_?” Kelly hid his clenched fists under his elbows. “If your mom is willing to take the younger ones, that’s enough. I can’t ask her to do more than that. Kiko and I can take care of ourselves.”

Nick frowned. “No one, huh? What about that place you were headed down in Florida?”

Kelly blinked at stared at Nick. How in the  _hell_  did he know about Florida?

“You don’t wanna go to Florida.” Ty shook his head adamantly. “It’s a massive retirement community. Hot. Humid. Gators the size of dinosaurs. Bugs the size of Volkswagens. It’s awful. Don’t do it.” 

“Maybe,” Kelly huffed. “But it’s also warm enough that freezing to death isn’t a concern.”

“Hey.” Nick stepped closer, peering intently at Kelly. “If there was a family in Florida willing to take you all, why don’t you think someone here would be willing to do the same thing?”

Kelly rubbed his hands over his face, the exhaustion of the past few days…weeks…months…whatever, finally catching up to him. “They weren’t going to.”

Nick blinked and then his jaw clenched. “What?”

“Kiko didn’t want to hear it, but no way were they going to take all four of us. I figured that once we got there, I’d leave the girls with Kiko’s friend and Jack and I would figure something else out.”

The derision in Nick’s snort was obvious. “Cause that worked out so well for you here.”

“Hey!” Kelly shoved Nick back so hard he stumbled. “Fuck you! I did what I had to do to get them out of that shithole! And, yeah, maybe we didn’t have heat, but I found us shelter and I kept them fed and fuck you for thinking you have any fucking right to judge me for any of it!”

Ty looked ready to deck Kelly. Zane was watching the whole thing with a considering look on his face. Nick…Nick looked absolutely floored.

“Kels…Kelly, I didn’t mean it like that.” The words were soft, just above a whisper. “You did good getting them out of there and I’m sorry that came off wrong. I wasn’t judging you, I was…” He stepped closer slowly, watching Kelly’s reaction carefully. “I’ll never judge you for that. I was just pissed that you even ended up in this mess in the first place.”

“Which wouldn’t be a problem if the government systems actually had the manpower and resources to check out foster families like they should,” Ty muttered.

“Oh.” Kelly swallowed hard as the sudden rush of anger left him in a flood. All that remained was shame and regret and exhaustion and guilt and the last remaining dregs of Kelly’s dignity. “I’m sorry.” His eyes burned and he squeezed them shut tight, willing the tears away. He hadn’t cried since the months after his parents died. If he started now, he wasn’t sure when he’d finally stop. “I’m sorry. You—all of you have done more than anyone could expect and I just—I can’t—”

The tremor started in his hands, but it spread fast, moving up his arms and into his chest and his throat until he was only getting little bursts of air. He lost the fight against the tears, but barely felt the streaks of warm liquid rolling twin trails down his face. Vision blurred and legs unsteady, Kelly lost focus on his surroundings. Someone wrapped their arm around his shoulder and whispered soothing, meaningless words into his ear. He thought they might have been moving, but he couldn’t be sure. Not right now.

His body and his brain were in overload. Still shaking, he was sobbing so hard now that the only sound he could make were his desperate gasps for air. He was dimply aware of being moved, shifted down onto something plush, but for a while after that it was only this aching loss and loneliness and fear and regret eating him from the inside out. He was lost to it for a long time until he finally— _finally_ —succumbed to a comfortable but troubled sleep. 


	9. Chapter 9

It was the shrieks of laughter that woke him.

Of course, Kelly didn’t realize it was laughter until later. All he heard was Lindsay screaming.

Kelly shot from asleep to awake in milliseconds, flailing as he attempted to free himself from the cocoon of warm blankets he’d tied himself in knots with. Lindsay was in trouble. She needed his help! Where….

“Kels, breathe.” An arm slid around his waist and pulled him upright and he was wrapped in someone’s embrace before he could blink. “Breathe. You’re okay. Everyone is okay.”

Reality began to seep into Kelly’s brain in bits and pieces. He remembered running from his foster family with the other three in tow. He remembered the house and the desperate decision to rob the corner store. The money and the mob and Nick.

“Nick?”

“Yeah?”

Nick was the one holding him upright, the one who was slowly disentangling Kelly from the sheets and soothing Kelly with whispered assurances that everything was fine. It was kind of nice, but at the same time the consideration made Kelly feel fragile, like even the slightest move in the wrong direction would make him shatter. He shuddered, holding himself together until his legs were finally free before easing toward the edge of the large bed. Nick didn’t try to hold him back.

“You okay, Kels?”

“I don’t know.” It was the only honest answer he could give. “Where is everyone else? How long was I out?”

“You’ve been sleeping for a couple of hours maybe? Everyone else is out in the living room. Ty’s mom Mara is here. She’s been entertaining the younger ones with Kiko.”

He heard it again, Lindsay’s shriek of laughter, the same sound his sleeping brain had morphed into a scream of terror. Kelly shivered and tried to shake his brain out of that dark place. They really were fine. For now, everything was fine.

Standing slowly to make sure he stayed on his feet, Kelly started moving toward the door. A glance down reminded him he was wearing the same torn and stained long-sleeve gray shirt he’d been wearing for about a week now. His hands and his face were dirty and his hair was a matted disgusting mess. Probably not the best first impression he could make.

Nick came up beside him and gestured toward a closed door on the opposite wall. “If you want, the shower’s through there. The clothes on top of the dresser might fit you.”

Looking the direction Nick pointed, Kelly saw a neatly folded stack of clothes, several towels, a rugged pair of black winter boots, and a thick, puffy, black winter jacket.

It really was like Cinderella. The thought popped into Kelly’s head and he wasn’t sure whether it’d be more appropriate to laugh or cry. In the end he didn’t do either. Nodding to let Nick know that he’d heard him, Kelly grabbed the towels and the clothes and shuffled into the bathroom in a daze. The marble tile and gleaming silver-tone fixtures and humungous walk-in shower did nothing to dispel Kelly’s daze or the certainty that this was some Cinderella fantasy he’d fallen into sideways. It didn’t matter much, though. Fantasy or not, a shower sounded amazing.

Kelly stripped and dropped his shoes and every stitch of clothing into the trash can. He’d be okay if he never saw any of it again. Ignoring the mirror, he turned on the shower and waited for the steam to start rising before stepping into the spray.

He groaned and nearly collapsed at the wash of warm relief the harsh spray brought. Steadying himself on the wall, Kelly let his chin drop to his chest and luxuriated. It had been so long since he’d felt this warm. He’d turned the water up to nearly scalding and the steam was getting so thick it’d become a thick fog that filled the room. Kelly didn’t care. He was ready to stay here until he used up every drop of hot water in this house.

Sighing, he rolled his head, cracking several bones in his neck.

He wanted to stay here forever, but life was moving forward without him in the living room. He needed to meet Ty’s mother and figure out if this offer was legit. He needed to make sure the kids ate some more before they left. He needed to…sleep. God he needed to go back to sleep.

Shaking himself to wake up a little more, Kelly grabbed the shampoo and scrubbed his hair. Three times. He considered a fourth but thought that might cross into overkill territory. It took five handfuls of body wash to feel even remotely close to clean, though.

Once he was dry, he put on the clothes Nick had left for him. All of it was too big, but whoever had bought them had made a good guess. If Kelly ever managed to get back to his normal weight, this stuff might work. Now he just cinched his belt tighter and ignored the sack-like fit of the shirts. He stuffed the socks into the boots and padded back into the bedroom barefoot.

Nick was sitting on the bed, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped between them. When the bathroom door opened, he looked up, smiling when his eyes met Kelly’s.

“Feel better?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” He looked down and picked at the hem of the long-sleeve shirt. It was soft and a nice, dark blue that wouldn’t show stains much. “This stuff almost fits.”

“It looks good.” Pink tinged Nick’s cheeks and his gaze shot back to the floor. Kelly felt a flush that wasn’t entirely from the shower and was glad he didn’t have to meet Nick’s intense green stare. “It’ll fit better once Mara starts feeding you. Trust me. That woman can cook.”

Kelly bit his lip, uncertainty building in his stomach like clouds gathering before a storm. Nick glanced up, doing a double-take when he caught sight of the expression on Kelly’s face.

“What? What’s wrong?”

Choking on an almost-laugh, Kelly shook his head. “Apparently nothing.” Kelly ran his fingers through his wet hair. “I ate and I have clothes and someone else is watching the kids and you tell me we’ve got a place to sleep for a while and I just…it’s a little hard to believe.”

Nick stood up, taking a couple of steps closer to Kelly. “It might be hard to believe, but I promise it’s true.”

Kelly huffed and placed the boots Nick had given him on top of the dresser before wrapping his arms around himself. “Maybe it’d be easier if she just took the younger ones. And Kiko if she’s got the space. It’s too much to ask a stranger to—”

“Hey. Stop. If you think those kids will go  _anywhere_  without you, you haven’t been paying attention.” Nick smiled and put his hands on Kelly’s shoulders, his thumbs just touching the base of Kelly’s throat. “They love you. They  _adore_  you and that right there tells me a lot.”

“Please.” Kelly rolled his eyes. He liked the weight of Nick’s hands on his shoulders. The touch felt grounding. Stabilizing. It was like the physical weight lifted some of the emotional weight he’d been carrying for so long. “No one would have left those kids in that house.”

“If you really believe that, you’re more of an optimist than I thought.” Nick squeezed lightly and dropped his hands to his pockets. “There are a  _lot_  of people who would’ve saved themselves first. Some people may have reported the house to social services later on, but that would’ve been an afterthought. What you did is stupid-level brave.”

Kelly laughed. “Man, I can’t tell if that’s supposed to be a compliment or an insult.”

“Both,” Ty said from the door. “Nick’s the same kind of stupid most days.”

Nick jerked back like someone had poked him with a branding iron. Kelly watched the flush that spread across Nick’s cheeks, confused. “You all right?”

“Yeah.” Nick rubbed his mouth and then ran his hand over his curls. “What’d you need, Tyler?”

“Ma wants to meet Kelly so I came to see what was taking you guys so long.” Ty slid his hands into his back pockets and smirked at Nick, his expression sending silent messages Kelly couldn’t decipher. Nick seemed to know what he was saying, though, because he glared and shook his head at Ty. All Ty did was laugh. “C’mon, idiots. Ma won’t wait much longer.”

Still cackling to himself, Ty left and Nick glanced at Kelly out the corner of his eye. “Sorry about him.”

“Why?”

Nick shrugged. “Just in general. He…Ty takes some getting used to.” Exhaling slowly, Nick nodded toward the door. “He’s right, though. Mara won’t wait much longer before she comes looking for us.”

“You’re not making me want to meet this woman, Nick,” Kelly said.

“Nah, she’s fantastic.” Nick relaxed a little and smiled. “She’s a little overwhelming sometimes, but she’s one of the best people I know.”

“All right.” Kelly took a deep breath. “Let’s go.”

Nick draped his arm over Kelly’s shoulders and steered him toward the living room at the front of the house. “Just take a deep breath, Kels. Everything will be fine. I promise.”

The words were quiet, meant only for Kelly’s ears, but they were filled with iron and steel, like a promise from Nick was actually worth something. Unlike every other promise Kelly had heard in the last few years, this one felt real. Believable. And that fucking terrified Kelly.

“I don’t know if I can make it through another shitstorm, Nick.” Kelly swallowed and stopped walking, glancing up at Nick. “I barely survived this last one.”

“You? C’mon. You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for. Smarter, too. Even robbing the store turned out to be a good idea, huh? You met me.”

Kelly chuckled and then started laughing so hard he had trouble breathing. He turned his face into Nick’s shoulder, hiding until he got himself under control. “Smart is not what I would call myself that night,” he finally managed to say.

“You don’t think meeting me was a good thing?” Nick smirked, but Kelly could see shadows in his eyes. “I’m hurt, Kels. Really.”

“Nick, I’m pretty sure you are the  _only_  good thing to come out of that night.” Stunned and uncomfortable were the only words Kelly could find to explain the expressions that flashed across Nick’s face. His mind scrambled to come up with something—anything—else to say. “And since when did you start calling me ‘Kels’?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” Nick’s expression shifted from uncomfortable to deer-in-the-headlights in less than a blink. “I…I can stop if you don’t like it.”

“Nah, it’s cool.” Kelly patted Nick’s chest and smiled up at him. It wasn’t a grin, was barely a smile really (he was too stressed and too tired for that), but it was genuine. “I never had a nickname before, you know?”

Nick relaxed a little under Kelly’s hand. “Really? Cause I’ve collected about a million.”

“That looks like a bat eating a bowl of strawberries,” a voice Kelly didn’t know said.

“It’s a house!” Lindsay insisted. “With red flowers. See?”

There was some crinkling of paper and then the woman said, “Oh, yes. I see. I wasn’t lookin’ at it right is all.”

“I still think it looks like a bat,” Jack muttered as Kelly walked into the room.

“Well that’s cause you’re a boy and you don’t know any better.” Lindsay stuck out her tongue at Jack before her whole face lit up when she spotted Kelly. “Kelly! Look!”

Lindsay shot to her feet and ran across the room, shoving the drawing into Kelly’s hands and then bouncing on the tips of her toes as she waited for his verdict. It didn’t look like anything really. A black box with some angular protrusions and a row of red squiggles.

“It’s a beautiful house, Lindsay,” Kelly said because he knew that was what she wanted to hear.

Nodding as though Kelly’s statement merely confirmed something she already knew, Lindsay snatched the paper back and bounced back to her spot on the floor in front of the coffee table. As she sat down, a tall woman, even taller than Kelly, stood up. She had a round face and brown hair the same shade as Ty’s, only barely touched with gray, and when she smiled, the expression lit up her bright green eyes.

“You must be Kelly! I’ve heard so much about you already.” Still grinning, the woman wound through the room and approached Kelly with her arms held out for a hug. Kelly had always been a tactile person—hugging even strangers when he was a kid—but the last year had nearly broken him of the habit. He didn’t mind it so much with Nick, but he trusted Nick already on some level. This women, generous offer or no, didn’t qualify for the same inner circle yet. 

Kelly stiffened slightly when Mara wrapped her arms around him, but he didn’t pull away. Hugging Mara was like being enveloped in a warm blanket. It was like hugging his own mother.

“The kids were just tellin’ me some of the stuff you’ve done for them.” Mara pulled back and cupped Kelly’s face, smiling down at him. “You’re one of a kind, aren’t you?”

“I doubt it,” Kelly said quietly.

“Yeah. Unfortunately the good ones rarely see it in themselves.” Her thumbs rubbed lines along Kelly’s cheekbones before dropping to his shoulders. “But what matters right now is practicalities. I’d be honored if you—all of you—came and stayed with my family as long as you’d like.”

Kelly swallowed around the rock that seemed to be blocking his throat. “It’s…that’s very kind of you, ma’am, but it’s too much to ask.”

“You didn’t ask, dear.” Still smiling, Mara linked her arm through Kelly’s and led him to sit on one of the cream-colored leather sofas. “We’ve already been in touch with the government people about registering as foster parents, so don’t worry about that none. There’ll be someone who comes out to the house to talk to you about what happened in the last place, though, if that’s all right.”

“What? You…when did you even know this was happening?” His head was spinning. How could this be happening so fast? “Won’t they make us go back?”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.” Mara’s smile dropped and she looked positively mutinous. “They wouldn’t dare take you back to that place, not after you were missing for weeks and the idiot family never bothered filing missing persons reports.”

They wouldn’t have to go back? Kelly was glad he was already sitting because the relief that washed through him at those words left him light-headed and weak-kneed.

“That’s good.” Kelly’s voice was so hoarse it was nearly unintelligible. He cleared his throat and tried again. “But—”

“Kels.” Nick’s voice drew Kelly’s eyes upward. Nick stood beside the couch, watching the whole conversation carefully. “Just say ‘yes, thank you,’ okay?”

Kelly bit his lip, hesitating even though he didn’t know why.

“Kelly?” Jack stood in front Kelly, his dark eyes wide and nervous. Leaning closer, he whispered in Kelly’s ear, “I don’t want to go if you don’t come.”

No other argument would ever be able to work as fast on Kelly. He closed his eyes and dropped his head lightly onto Jack’s shoulder, dragging the kid into a hug.

“Of course I’m going.” His words were quiet, but they were still loud enough for Nick and Mara to hear. “Wherever you go, I go. You know that.”

Kelly squeezed his eyes shut tight and prayed harder than he’d prayed since the night his parents were late coming home from dinner.

_Please, God. Please don’t let this fairy tale bubble I’ve found myself in burst and hurt these kids._


	10. Chapter 10

It was getting dark by the time they pulled into the Gradys’ driveway, so Kelly couldn’t get a really good look at the house. All he got was the impression of large porches and pointed roofs and sprawl. Two stories and mostly wood and brick, the place was lit up from the inside and glowed like a homing beacon. It glowed like home.  

“Is this for real?” Kiko whispered as she stepped up beside Kelly.

“As far as I can tell.”

Kiko nodded slowly, hope in her eyes. “If it isn’t, don’t tell me, okay?”

“Ditto.”

Nick pulled in behind them in his clean but obviously used SUV and Ty and Zane arrived not long after driving a classic mustang that had seen better days. Apparently Ty was still in the middle of restoring it. They’d come to move all of Ty’s old things out of his room. Kelly swallowed the urge to insist it wasn’t necessary. He already knew they’d insist it was.

“Doin all right, Kels?” Nick said as he approached. “You still look a little shell-shocked.”

“That’s ‘cause I’m a little shell-shocked.”

Nick draped his arm over Kelly’s shoulders—a gesture Kelly was quickly realizing was an ingrained habit with the guy—and guided him toward the house. “The Gradys in general are an overpowering bunch, but you’ll never find more loyal people in your life.”

Kelly glanced up at Nick, silently doubting that statement. Nick seemed pretty damn loyal himself.

“Ma, you guys need help?” A slimmer copy of Ty stepped through the screen door, hands in his pockets. He was softer, too. His smile didn’t have nearly as many teeth as Ty’s.

“Deuce, this is Kelly,” Nick said, pulling Kelly up to the porch. “Kels, this is Ty’s younger brother Deacon.”

“Pretty much everyone calls me Deuce,” he said, smiling Mara’s soft smile as he held out his hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Yeah, you too.” Kelly shook his hand, trying to get his nerves to settle. Nick’s hand shifted, rubbing the spot between Kelly’s shoulder blades. Somehow that made it easier to breathe. “I’m sorry we’re invading your house like this.”

“Nah, man, this is awesome.” His eyes—green like his mother and his brother—lit up. “Not only am I not the youngest in the house anymore, you guys being here is like a buffer between me and my mother’s smothering concern.”

“I heard that, you ingrate.” Mara glared and smacked the back of Deuce’s head with her clutch purse. Even through the glare, Kelly could see the humor in her eyes and the almost-hidden crinkles around her mouth. “Go help your brother with his boxes before I sic your father on you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” Still smiling, Deuce leaned down and kissed his mother’s cheek before pulling his brother into a hug. “I thought it’d be  _years_  before I got to completely erase you from the house, dude.”

“This coming from the guy who’s spent the last five weekends at my house?” Ty countered. “Please, you know you miss me.”

Ty pushed his brother up the stairs, following close behind. Zane was only a few steps behind him. Shaking his head, Kelly heard him mutter, “My life used to be so quiet.” 

“You’d miss it,” Nick told him.

Zane glanced their way, the corner of his lip quirking up. “Yeah, I know.”

The next hour was a strange sort of organized chaos. The girls both moved into Mara’s guest bedroom while Kelly and Jack set their bags in Ty’s old room. Ty, Zane, and Deuce moved out box after box of pictures and trophies and memorabilia from Ty’s childhood. While they did that Mara had organized a different sort of convoy, roping her husband Earl—who was taller and broader than either of his boys—into bringing down boxes of clothes down from the attic and up from the basement.

“Jesus, woman. Why in the hell have we even kept this stuff so long?” Earl huffed as he dropped another stack of boxes on the floor of Ty’s one-time bedroom.

“You never know what you might find a use for. Just look now! At least half of this might work in one form or another.” Mara shook out a shirt and a cloud of dust blew off it. She frowned at the fabric like it’d offended her. “’Course, it’ll need to be washed first.”

“Probably more than once,” Earl muttered as he left.

“Now some of the smaller things might be a bit old, but lucky for us boy’s fashion doesn’t change quite as much or quite as fast as it does for girls.”

“Ma’am, anything you have in there will be better than what we brought with us,” Kelly assured her softly. “Thank you.”

Mara’s smile came back, broad and a little misty. “You’re welcome, dear. Anything you need, you just tell us. We’ll make sure you’re set up all right.”

After trying on more clothing than Kelly had owned in years, Mara herded everyone in to the dining room for dinner—all eleven of them. The group was noisy in the best way, the way that close families who communicated well and teased each other mercilessly usually were.

A couple hours later, though, Ty, Zane, and Nick had left; Deuce, Mara, Earl, and Ty’s grandfather Chester had all gone to bed; and Kelly and Jack were left alone in Ty’s old room.

The place looked weirdly bare since Ty had stripped shelves and wall space and none of it had been replaced. It looked, appropriately enough, like they’d just moved in.

“They seem nice,” Jack said into the darkness.

“I think they are nice,” Kelly whispered back.

“Do you think they’ll like us enough to let us stay?”

The eternal question of the foster child. Will this place be home? Will this family let me love them? Will I get to stay this time or will my life get upended and rearranged again? How dangerous is it to hope this time around?

Unfortunately, Kelly didn’t have answers to any of those questions because they were the exact same questions that made Kelly feel like he’d been mainlining caffeine for the last twelve hours.

All he could tell Jack was the truth.

“I hope so, kid. I really, really hope so.” 


	11. Chapter 11

Kelly had honestly believed that he’d never attend school again. He figured he’d spend the next two years living on the streets and picking up odd jobs until he was eighteen and could take his GED, get a real job, and find a place to live. It had been two weeks since he’d started attending school with Deuce and Kiko. Jack and Lindsay had been enrolled in a nearby elementary school. Two full weeks and Kelly still wasn’t used to it.

He felt like he was living on borrowed time. Or in the middle of a daydream. At any second everything was liable to disintegrate around him, just like it had multiple times before. Kelly wanted to believe that this time he’d found a place that would last and that maybe, even if it was never really home, he could at least feel safe. He wanted to believe that desperately, but he couldn’t. Not yet.

The bell rang, releasing him from last period. He should have been paying attention, but he hadn’t been. Kelly had missed whatever the last twenty minutes of the lecture had been about. He couldn’t really bring himself to care too much. In the grand scheme of his life, a C wasn’t the end of the world.

He shouldered his backpack and nodded goodbye to the few people in his class he’d managed to form some sort of acquaintanceship with. Coming into this school under the aegis of Ty and Deuce Grady had given Kelly and Kiko way more clout than he’d anticipated and, so far, no one had been anything but nice. That didn’t mean Kelly was comfortable with any of them yet. A year ago he’d probably have slipped right into the mix and carved himself a place. Not after the last six months. Now the ground felt like quicksand and it was like one wrong step would suck him under.

Weaving through the crowd, Kelly headed toward the student parking lot to meet Deuce and Kiko. He scanned the faces he passed out of habit, searching for the familiar in a place where he was a stranger. The last thing he expected was for his eyes to lock with Nick’s.

He smiled when Kelly spotted him, tilting his head slightly as a gleam came into his green eyes. He was leaning against Deuce’s car, obviously waiting for them. For the first time that day, Kelly’s smile didn’t feel forced. He picked up his pace and opened his arms for a hug as soon as he was close enough to Nick.

“I thought you disappeared on me,” Kelly said softly, holding Nick tight.

Nick huffed a laugh and shook his head. Kelly could feel him smiling against his cheek. “Sorry. Been busy the past couple weeks.” Nick squeezed tighter for a second before he pulled back. “You could’ve called me if, you know, you needed anything or you wanted to talk. You’re livin’ with a house of people who all know how to reach me.”

“Yeah, well.” Kelly shrugged and ran a hand over the hair he’d finally gotten cut last week. “I wasn’t really sure…I mean, I didn’t want to get you in trouble with Paddy or anything.”

“I appreciate the concern, Kels, but it’s not necessary. Really.” Nick cupped Kelly’s face in one hand and leaned down slightly to stare into Kelly’s eyes. “Just stay away from him, yeah? No more robbing stores and you don’t have to worry.”

Kelly sighed and rolled his eyes. “I’m never living that down, am I?”

“Babe, the night we met you pulled an Annie Oakley on me and walked off with more money than either of us are probably ever going to see again.” Nick patted Kelly’s cheek and dropped his hands, sliding them into his pockets and leaning against Deuce’s old Lincoln. “That’s a hell of a first impression. No  _way_  are you living that down.”

The flush Kelly felt rising in his cheeks had to be obvious, but Kelly pretended it wasn’t there. “You’re an ass, you know that?”

Nick laughed. “It’s been mentioned a time or two, yeah.”

“Not surprising.” Kelly dropped his backpack to the concrete and leaned against the car next to Nick, sidling so close Nick had to drape his arm over Kelly’s shoulders or risk elbowing Kelly in the ribs. “So whatcha doin’ here, Nicko?”

“Came by to see you, see how you’ve been settling in.” A couple of people passing by called out greetings to Nick. He waved back, but most of his attention stayed on Kelly. “You all right, Kels?”

“Sure.”

Nick glanced down, skepticism in his eyes. “Don’t lie, Kels. You’re not good at it.”

“I’m not lying.” Nick’s eyes narrowed and Kelly sighed. “I’m  _not_. I’ve got food and clothes and I’m back in school and the Gradys have been fantastic and…I’m all right.”

“Not good?”

Kelly dropped his head to Nick’s shoulder. “Barely all right.” 

“Hey, O’Flaherty.” Deuce walked up and slapped Nick on the shoulder. “Did I know you were meeting us here?”

“Nah. Had an unexpectedly free afternoon and wanted to swing by and check on the kids.”

“Now I’m a kid?” Kelly jabbed Nick in the ribs and pulled away enough to glare up at him. “I’m not  _that_  much younger than you. And I can still shoot you.”

“Can you?” Deuce raised his eyebrows. “Am I missing a  _huge_  part of the story between you two?”

“Yes,” Nick said at the same time Kelly said, “No.”

Deuce nodded slowly. “Great. Glad we cleared that up.”

Shaking his head, Deuce walked to the driver side and unlocked the car, dropping his backpack in the backseat.

As soon as he was out of earshot, Nick leaned down to whisper in Kelly’s ear. “You don’t still have the gun, do you?”

“Of course I do,” he whispered back. “What the hell else am I going to do with it? Leave it on the street for some gang thug or little kid to find?”

“You could give it to me. I’ll get rid of it.”

Kelly shook his head, pulling away from Nick. “It’s fine.”

“Kels, don’t—”

“Nick.” Kelly stepped completely out of Nick’s hold and glared to shut him up. “It’s  _fine_.”

“No, it’s not.” Nick grabbed Kelly by the shoulders and held him in place, his eyes intense and his voice harsh. “Kelly, you picked up a gun  _off the street_. You don’t know where it came from or what someone did with it before then. If anyone finds you with it and you get tagged into a robbery or, fuck, some murder investigation—you can’t…just give me the fucking gun, okay?”

Kelly tilted his head, watching the muscle in Nick’s cheek twitch. “Is this why you came today? To get that?”

“No,” he insisted. His eyes widened just a touch and he shook his head. The protest was believable, but that didn’t mean Kelly believed it. He pursed his lips, trying to pull away. Nick’s grip tightened. “Kels, listen to me. I can get rid of it and no one will ever be able to link it back to you.”

“Leave it, Nick.”  Kelly jerked out of Nick’s hold, aware of Deuce’s eyes on them as well as plenty of other kids from school. Not that Kelly cared about that. He just hated that Nick was doing this  _here_. And he hated a voice in the back of his head was whispering to just give in to what Nick was asking. He shook his head, both for Nick’s benefit and that stupid voice’s. “I still need it.”

“Why?” Nick breathed the word, sounding almost as desperate as Kelly had felt a few weeks ago. “Just tell me  _why_. Give me one  _sane_ , solid reason why.”

Kelly swallowed. He wanted to keep his mouth shut, to keep his fears (the fears that even he knew were irrational) locked inside his head where they belonged, but this was Nick. This was the guy who’d gone miles and miles out of his way to help someone he had less than zero reasons to help. Someone he’d actually had multiple reasons to hate and wish ill things on. If anyone deserved an answer, it was Nick. There wasn’t much Kelly would deny him. Handing over the gun was one. Answering wasn’t.

“Because I feel like the ground is going to open up and swallow me at any second and I want to make sure that I’m safe when it does.”

Kelly forced the words out all in one breath and then spun, opening the rear passenger door and dropping onto the seat, steadfastly staring out the window that  _didn’t_  have Nick standing there staring at him.

His hands were shaking and it took every ounce of Kelly’s concentration to keep his breathing even. As unsettled and unsafe as Kelly had felt for a long time, this was the first time he’d ever let himself say so aloud. And he’d said it to Nick of all people. Part of Kelly’s brain felt like that was fine because  _of course_  he’d said it to Nick—who else would really get what he meant or, more importantly, would take him seriously?—but the rest of him wasn’t so sure. It was a weakness he despised, this fear. He wouldn’t be able to keep himself or the kids safe if he was paranoid and jumpy and delusional. How would he know when the threat he felt was real and when it was only in his nightmare-fueled imagination?

The door opened, the sound making Kelly jump, and Kiko ducked her head into the car to pass Kelly his backpack. “You left this outside, Kelly.”

Shit. He’d been so focused on getting away from Nick after that confession that he’d forgotten it. Nick made him oblivious to the rest of the world. It was an effect Kelly wasn’t sure he liked. He definitely didn’t like becoming so lost in his own head that he left things lying around. He didn’t have much to begin with. He couldn’t afford to lose any of it.

“Thanks,” Kelly murmured, taking the bag and dropping it between his feet. Deuce got into the car a moment later, his smile just a touch too bright and stiff to be real. Kelly was extraordinarily grateful to the guy for not asking a single question even though curiosity had to be burning him up.

After they picked up the little ones and got to the Gradys’, Kelly noticed the tiny pocket near the top of his backpack was unzipped. He never used that pocket, so he definitely hadn’t been the one to open it. Carefully, he hooked his finger into the pocket and peered inside. There was a business card in there. The information on the front had been crossed out and on the back there was a phone number and a short note in blocky handwriting.

CALL ME IF YOU CHANGE YOUR MIND. OR FOR ANYTHING.

—N

Stressed as he still was, Kelly had to smile.  _Stubborn Irish bastard_. Kelly already knew he hadn’t heard the end of this from Nick.

The prospect actually made him feel better. 


	12. Chapter 12

The night of the robbery, Nick had carefully dug the bullets out of the wall in case he’d needed them to track down the robber. Now he was planning on using them to help  _protect_  that robber.

His life was so fucked up it was ridiculous.

“Back already?” Digger grinned at him as Nick stepped off the elevator into their office. “We don’t usually see you this often.”

“What can I say? You guys do good work.”

“We know.” Winking, Digger crossed his arms and leaned back in the chair. “Whatcha need today, kid?”

“I need ballistics run on these. Off the books.”

Digger’s head tilted, his expression turning serious and his gaze considering. “For you or for Paddy?”

“For me. I’ll pay for it.”

“Those are expensive tests, kid. What you need them for?”

Sighing, Nick ran his hand over his face and then through his curls. “Kelly? The kid we set up with Mara?” Digger nodded. “Well, the gun that he used to rob me was one he just found on the street. Problem is, the kid still has it and he won’t give it to me to get rid of.”

“So go visit while he’s at school and take it back.”

“I should, I know, but…” Nick ground his teeth. “He doesn’t feel safe yet, but he trusts me. If his gun goes missing, he’ll know it was me. He won’t trust me anymore. And if that happens, if he loses his anchor here? I just… I don’t know. I feel like he’s on the verge of making a break for it if only so he can feel like he’s in control of something.”

“Okay.” Nick watched the lines around Digger’s dark eyes deepen. “All right, I get that and all, but why does that mean you need ballistics done?”

“Because I’m worried about  _why_  a mostly loaded, high-quality weapon was tossed, man,” Nick said, his voice quiet. “If anyone finds him with that gun and the last thing it was used for was to rob a bank or kill someone and Kelly’s got no alibi?”

Digger sucked in a breath. “They’ll throw the book at a kid like him and forget he existed after that.”

“Exactly. I just want to know what we’re dealing with here.”

As Digger pondered the possibilities before them, Nick picked at the pocket of his jeans, trying not to shift nervously or otherwise fidget.

“You do realize that if we go poking into things, asking too many questions of too many people, and this turns out to lead to Alice’s rabbit hole or something, we could start a shit storm that kid won’t be prepared for?”

It may be logical, but Nick didn’t care. “If we don’t check it out, the storm may break out of nowhere and he’ll be even less ready.”

“Shit.” Digger ran both hands over his close-cropped hair. “Man, I can’t tell if this kid is slightly stupid or one of the unluckiest S.O.B.’s I have ever heard of in my life.”

“Mostly the latter.” Nick shrugged. “Maybe a tiny bit of the former.”

Snorting and shaking his head, he held out his hand and wiggled his fingers. “Give. I’ll see what I can do.”

Nick took the plastic bag with the bullets out of his pocket and dropped it in Digger’s hand. As sure as he was that he needed answers, that he needed to know what was coming, he also felt like he might be making a huge mistake. 

“Keep it quiet as long as you can, all right?”

“No promises, Nicky.” Diggers hand closed around the bullets. “You know how secrets have a way of coming to light eventually.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Oh and don’t pay me for this, okay?” Digger grimaced. “I have a feeling I’m gonna regret running these tests. I don’t want the guilt of taking your money for them too.”

“You sure, man?”

“Hell yes I’m sure. This is like we’re leaving a huge pile of propane-soaked kindling in a library and hoping no one comes in with a lighter, kid. I’m not taking your money for something like this.”

Nick nodded his thanks and left. Digger was probably right. Maybe he should leave it alone, but he couldn’t. Nick just hoped he’d be ready when this particular bonfire exploded in his face. 


	13. Chapter 13

Three days after the gun incident, Kelly went for a walk through the woods surrounding the Gradys’ house. It was cold and gray, enough that Kelly thought it might snow before the day ended. The air burned his lungs when he breathed, but the slight sting helped keep his mind clear. Well, mostly clear.

All right, fine. It didn’t clear much of anything at all.

Nick and the gun and the kids and the Gradys and the mob and shit. He’d thought his life was complicated before? This was ridiculous. Nick was probably right. Giving him the gun would be the smarter choice. The problem was that every time he actually considered going through with it, Kelly nearly descended into an all-out panic attack. He couldn’t. Not yet.

He took another deep breath, letting the tingles spread deep into his lungs. _It’ll be all right_ , he told himself.  _The Gradys are nice and Nick has done nothing but protect us and everything is going to be fine_.

Maybe one day Kelly would actually believe that. Maybe one day it wouldn’t feel like a lie.

After the way they’d left things, Kelly had figured that he’d either see Nick the next day or not at all for another two weeks or so. He’d been wrong on both counts. He heard steps crunching on the dried twigs and dead leaves and stopped, pulse picking up until he spotted Nick moving toward him. The instant rush of warm relief Kelly felt was strange. And strong. Strangely strong. The wariness he  _should_  have felt first was late to the party.

“How’d you find me?”

“You’re leaving a trail behind you a mile wide, Kels.” Nick stopped a few feet away, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket. “You weren’t hard to follow once Chester pointed out what direction you went.”

“Okay.  _Why_ ’d you find me then?”

“I can’t come to say hi?”

“ _Did_  you just come to say hi?”

Nick pursed his lips. “Kind of.”

The disappointment that hit Kelly’s chest was as disproportionately strong as the relief at seeing Nick had been. “If this is about the gun, the answer is still no.”

“It is and it isn’t.” Nick rolled his shoulders, his eyes dropping to the ground. “You remember the bullets you put in the wall of the store?”

“Yeah,” Kelly said slowly, not sure where this was going. “It’s not like I do that all the time, you know.”

Nick huffed, the corner of his lip jumping. “I know.”

“What about them then?”

Hesitation this heavy wasn’t something Kelly had thought he would ever see on Nick. Whatever he had to say probably wouldn’t be good. “Before you left that note and returned the cash, I dug those bullets out of the wall.” He shrugged looking more than a little uncomfortable. “Figured it might help me track you down.”

Kelly crossed his arms. “It wouldn’t have.”

“Yeah, well, I know that  _now_.” Nick gave Kelly a self-depreciating smirk that didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Dread built itself a home in the pit of Kelly’s stomach, the tingles from that complementing the bite from the cold air and almost making Kelly numb. “What’d you do, Nick?”

“I, uh…” Nick rubbed his face, but the motion wasn’t quick enough to hide Nick’s wince. “I had someone run the ballistics profile through a couple of databases to see what kind of history that gun had.”

It felt like Kelly’s heart dropped straight out of his chest. “You found something, didn’t you?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah.” Nick took a deep breath and met Kelly’s eyes. “The gun was used in a triple homicide. A family. Father and two kids. Politician who wouldn’t play along with Novikov’s protection racket.”

“Kids?” Bile rose up Kelly’s throat and his balance faltered.

Nick’s eyes widened and he darted closer, grabbing Kelly’s elbow. Kelly had already countered his instability, so the motion almost sent him to the rocky ground until Nick caught him again.

Kids. The gun he’d found had killed kids. Swallowing convulsively kept Kelly from fertilizing the forest with lunch, but he couldn’t get the thought out of his head.

Nick wrapped his arms around Kelly and held him tight against his chest. One of Nick’s hands dug into Kelly’s hair and the other pressed firmly into the center of his back as he swayed, murmuring softly in Kelly’s ear.

“It’ll be all right, babe. Just don’t forget to breathe, Kels. Breathe.” Nick pulled back enough to look down at Kelly, his worry obvious. “You still with me?”

“Shut up.” Kelly dropped his forehead to Nick’s shoulder, giving in for the moment and letting himself accept the comfort.

He knew what he had to do, but Kelly still didn’t want to. Well, he  _did_ —if he could do something to catch someone who would kill kids then of course he’d do it—but it would still leave him bereft and while not defenseless exactly, definitely less defended.

Nick took a deep breath that Kelly felt as much as he heard. “Kels, did you open the gun? Did you handle any of the bullets?”

His head jerked up off of Nick’s shoulder. “What? No. No, no, except…” Kelly shook his head to clear it, trying to breathe and think. “I released the magazine to see if it was loaded, but I didn’t take any of the bullets out. You think…”

Nick nodded. “We might be able to get fingerprints off the bullets if the killer handled them.”

“What happened to just getting rid of it?”

“That was before I found out what that gun did.” Nick’s jaw clenched and his eyes went dark. “I just hope they were stupid enough to leave prints behind.”

“How likely is that?”

Absently stroking Kelly’s back, Nick shook his head. “Not incredibly. Novikov doesn’t employ stupid gunmen.”

“I recognize that name…” Kelly’s brow furrowed as he tried to remember where he’d heard it before. “Isn’t that who you thought I was working for?”

“Yeah. He’d be just the type to coerce some poor kid into doing his dirty work for him on a job like that. Russian syndicate with a lot of power, a lot of money, and absolutely no morals.”

“Fantastic. So now with one stupid decision I’ve managed to piss off or implicate two separate crime families?” They were out in the open and Kelly still felt like the world was collapsing on him. He pulled away from Nick and paced the small open space they stood in. “Fucking hell. All I wanted to do was keep those three safe and I fucked everything up.”

“Hey, don’t do that.” Nick didn’t stop Kelly’s pacing, but his voice was still enough to bring Kelly to a standstill. “You did what you had to do and you did it with what you had. I don’t blame you for that. No one would. You couldn’t have known.”

Kelly scoffed. “ _You_  knew.”

“Kelly, I  _live_  in that world. I know what happens on the other side of the law. I know what people are willing to do because of money or loyalty or fear.”

The words and the way Nick said them injected a dark, horrifying thought into Kelly’s mind. He wasn’t sure he wanted to ask, but he had to. He had to know. “Have you?”

Nick’s head tilted slightly. “Have I what?”

“Have you killed people for Paddy?”

All trace of emotion dropped from Nick’s face. His body tightened and his posture straightened and Kelly knew the answer even before Nick spoke. “Once. To stop something like what happened to this family.”

Kelly exhaled heavily. Not good. Not as bad as he’d feared, either. Still not good, though. “Do you regret it?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

Nick blinked, a little of that awful blankness leaving his face. “Okay?”

Swallowing, Kelly nodded and wrapped his arms around himself. “If you don’t regret it, he probably deserved it. So, okay.”

“Just like that, huh?” Nick looked like he couldn’t decide if he was impressed, confused, or amused.

“Yeah. Just like that.” Kelly shrugged one shoulder. “I think you wouldn’t have done any of the shit you’ve done for me if you weren’t a pretty decent human being, Nick. And I think you’ve earned a fair amount of trust.”

“Then trust me now.” Nick stepped closer, putting his hands on Kelly’s shoulders. “Kelly, trust me with this.”

Kelly stared up at Nick, his muscles so tense he trembled with it. His mouth opened, but he had to force the words to leave his lips. “I  _can’t_.” Nick’s eyes widened and his lips parted. Kelly barreled over him, the words spilling out so fast they were almost a single indecipherable word. “I want to—God, Nick, I know I should and I  _want_  to but I just….I can’t!”

Nick’s face pinched—this time with concentration instead of annoyance. It took a second, but Nick closed his eyes, resignation in every line of his body.

“Will you trade me for it, then?”

Kelly blinked. “What?”

Slowly, Nick opened his eyes. The resignation had transformed into resolution, the same determination Kelly had seen in Nick’s green eyes the day he’d broken into the abandoned house to invite Kelly to lunch. “You need to feel safe. I get that. God, believe me, I get that. But it doesn’t need to be  _that_  gun, right? If I trade you for a clean one, one I know won’t trace back to anything or anyone, will you give it up?”

“Yes.” Agreeing to that was easy. No panic bubbled up and no urge to break free of Nick’s hands and bolt into the woods gnawed at Kelly’s heels. “You’d do that?”

“To get that fucking gun away from you and those kids? Hell, yes.” The very slight smile on Nick’s face belied the harsh words. He ran his hand over Kelly’s hair until he gripped the back of Kelly’s neck. “I would have done it the other day too, I just…sometimes I say things and the way they come out isn’t exactly how I mean it.”

“It may be something I’ve noticed.” Kelly managed a small smile and let himself sink onto Nick’s chest, hugging him tight. It felt natural, this embrace, like it was something Kelly had been missing for a long time without realizing it. “Thank you, Nick. For everything.”

“It’s fine.” Nick pressed his lips to the top of Kelly’s head, running his fingers through his hair.

“It’s not fine. You saved our lives and now this?” Kelly shook his head, practically burrowing into Nick’s hold. “I don’t think I’ll ever be able to repay you for everything you’ve done.”

“I don’t want you to.” Nick eased Kelly away so that he could look down into his eyes. He looked serious. Practically worried. “I didn’t do it so you’d owe me, Kels. I don’t want you thinking like that.”

“Well, good, I guess.” Kelly huffed a fake laugh and tried to broaden his smile. “I’d be in debt for the rest of my life if you were the type to keep records and collect.”

“You don’t owe me anything.” The words were emphatic. Decisive. Final.

Kelly rolled his eyes. “You’ve made your point, Nick.”

When Kelly tried to pull away, Nick yanked him back. “Don’t do that wounded puppy thing. I just…” Nick trailed off, his words turning into something that was almost a growl. “I just want to make sure you’re not thinking I’m using you like that, trying to collect favors or whatever. Cause I’m not. I wouldn’t do that to you. Okay?”

The impassioned speech and the intensity in Nick’s green eyes left Kelly feeling like he was missing some small but incredibly meaningful piece of the picture. Without it, there was only one thing Kelly could say in response.

“Wounded puppy thing?”

Nick winced. “Sorry. Forget I said that. I didn’t mean it.”

“No, I think you did mean it, but I’ll let it slide this time.” Kelly flicked Nick’s earlobe. “But you have to make it up to me later.”

For just a second—less than that, really—Nick’s eyes flashed with something molten. Kelly flushed at that look even if he wasn’t sure what it meant. It was gone before he could try to decipher it.

“What, arming you isn’t enough?” Nick tone was wry and only a little hoarse.

“It’s a start,” Kelly said. “I’m not a cheap date.”

Nick stopped breathing for a second, then a smile—a real one—began to spread across his face. “That’s good to know.”

Nick insisted on walking Kelly back to the house and then left, promising he’d call Kelly and let him know when they could make the trade. Kelly said all the right things and answered all the questions Nick had, but when he watched Nick drive away, part of him still wondered if he’d ever see the guy again once he gave up that gun. 


	14. Chapter 14

It took Nick four days to get back to Kelly this time. He hated every second of the delay. Every second that passed was another one where everything could go to hell on him. And he knew that because on day two he’d gotten a call from Owen at Sidewinder.

“You remember what Digger said about asking questions and shaking trees?” The tension in Owen’s voice had told Nick everything.

He had to swallow before he could talk. “Yeah. What termites are creeping out of the woodwork now?”

“I think whoever Novikov is paying off at the police department told them someone found the gun and ran ballistics. It’s in the file that it came from us. Last night someone broke into the office and ransacked the place.”

“Shit.” Nick sat down heavily, his head dropping between his knees. “Are you guys all right? What’d they find? Was there anything to find?”

“Yeah. No one was here so we’re fine. Everything they broke was replaceable. Luckily, we didn’t have anything on Kelly that links him to the gun, but the kid’s file is one of the missing pieces. They grabbed everything from the past week.” Owen sighed. “It won’t take them a lot of mental power to connect the street kid to the gun, Nick.”

A string of vicious curses ran through Nick’s head, but he switched gears quickly, trying to think this through. They were looking for a street kid, not a foster kid. It would take them at least a few days—maybe a week or more—to track him down to the Gradys’. Unless…

“Tell me you didn’t have a file on Mara or the other kids, Owen.”

Nick could almost hear Owen’s wince through the phone. “Yeah, man. We had all of that. We were helping Riley build up a case to get the kids placed with Mara.”

“Fucking hell.” Nick dug his fingers into his hair and dropped his head back against the wall. “What do we do?”

“We keep an eye on Kelly and the kids and we get that gun to the people at the crime lab we can trust and we spread the word that Kelly doesn’t have it anymore.” 

“When has that move  _ever_ worked?” Nick growled.

“Nick, we don’t have any other play.”

And, fuck it all, Owen had been right.

The conversation had sent Nick into overdrive but it still took another day and a half to track down a completely clean (as in straight out of the box) Glock 20. And then it took another half a day to find a time to meet Kelly. Impatience got the better of Nick and he ended up waiting for him at his school.

The smile that lit up Kelly’s face when he spotted Nick made all the other shit worth it. A large part of Nick just wished that smile meant more than friendship, more than that Kelly was just glad to see someone he trusted. Wishful longings aside, Nick couldn’t keep from smiling back, especially when Kelly plastered himself against Nick’s chest.

“Idiot,” Nick murmured fondly.

“Shut up, Nicko.” Kelly pulled back a little to look up at Nick. Only then did Nick notice the circles around Kelly’s bright, changeable eyes or the gray tinge to his skin. Or how it looked like Kelly had dropped the few pounds he’d managed to gain while living with Mara. “Didn’t expect to see you for a while. Whatcha doin’ here?”

“Came to give you a ride home.”

Kelly’s head tilted slightly as he carefully examined Nick’s face. “You did, huh?” A little of the light in Kelly’s eyes dimmed and he sighed. “That time already?”

Nick nodded, tearing his eyes away from Kelly to scan the area. He spotted Owen outside the fenced-in parking lot, but couldn’t see any of Novikov’s guys. Didn’t mean they weren’t there. Still, Nick wasn’t talking about any of that here.

“C’mon. I already texted Deuce and told him you’ve got another way home.”

Sighing, Kelly stepped away from Nick and followed him toward the edge of the parking lot. The more Kelly’s momentary enthusiasm seeped out of his expression, the more Nick saw of how bone-tired the kid really was. Nick still bit his tongue against any questions until they were sitting inside his SUV.

“You been sleeping?” Nick asked.

“No.” No hedging, no excuses, and no explanation.

“You haven’t been eating either.”

Kelly shook his head, staring out the passenger window. “Can’t keep it down.”

“You’re not sick, are you?” Kelly didn’t  _look_  sick. Didn’t sound congested, either. God, he hoped Kelly was okay. Nick didn’t need any other worries right now.

“It’s just stress.” Kelly’s voice was low, almost inaudible. “I get nauseas when I’m stressed.”

And Nick was going to have to pile  _more_  stress on his shoulders today. “I’m sorry, Kels.”

Out the corner of his eyes, Nick watched Kelly smile slightly. “Not your fault. I’m more than capable of getting into trouble on my own, obviously.”

“You and everyone else on this planet,” Nick muttered. He sure had more than enough trouble in his past to prove the point.

Kelly dropped his head back against the headrest and tilted it toward Nick, a rueful smile on his full lips. “Guess I’m lucky you’re determined to get me out of my own way, huh?”

Nick relaxed a little. Reaching over, he patted Kelly’s thigh, desperately ignoring the way Kelly’s muscles shifted under Nick’s palm. This crush of his was getting ridiculous. And impossible.  _It’s not going to happen_ , he reminded himself again.

“You did pretty good getting yourself out of trouble, too, Kels.” Nick was impressed at how level his voice sounded. Completely at odds with how fluttery his stomach felt.

“If you say so.” Kelly shifted in his seat, turning more to face Nick. “So, what do you have for me?”

“Look in the glove box.”

Kelly opened the glove box and retrieved the black gun case, opened it, and pulled out the Glock.

“It looks exactly like the other one.” Kelly turned it over in his hand, checking the safety and the empty magazine with practiced ease. “Why’d you get me the same one?”

“Because I knew you could use it well.”

“Makes sense, I guess.”

“Is the other one safe?”

Kelly pursed his lips, placing the gun back in the case. “Yeah.”

“Don’t do that.” Nick said.

“If you say anything about wounded puppies, I will load this thing and shoot you with it.”

Nick smirked. “You’re the one doing it.” Kelly huffed and closed the case with a solid click, one that was a little louder than necessary. “C’mon, Kels. If I say something to piss you off, you gotta tell me, not just slam things and glare.”

Kelly was silent for a second—glaring at Nick—before he unzipped his backpack, stuffing the gun case inside. “I’m not an idiot, Nick.”

“I’m aware,” Nick said slowly. “Why are you reminding me of that?”

“Because you ask me stupid questions sometimes. Of course the fucking gun is safe, Nick.”

Crossing his arms, Kelly stared out the windshield, refusing to meet Nick’s eyes. Nick tightened his grip on the wheel and fought the urge to slam his forehead against the stupid thing. It seemed like he always took one step forward and five back with Kelly just because he had no fucking filter on his mouth where the kid was concerned.

“Sorry,” Nick muttered, rubbing his lips with one hand.

“Oh.”

Nick glanced at Kelly. “Oh what?”

“The wounded puppy expression. I just saw what it looks like.”

“I do  _not_  look like a wounded puppy,” Nick said.

“Yeah, you do. Or you did. Now you look like a pissed off guard dog.”

Nick rolled his eyes. “You’re an idiot, Kels.”

“I thought we just established that I  _wasn’t_  an idiot.” Kelly raised an eyebrow and Nick groaned.

“I need to just stop talking around you.” He turned up the long, narrow road that led to the Gradys’ place. “I either piss you off or you end up laughing at me.”

“I wasn’t pissed off.”

Nick wasn’t really sure he hid his skepticism very well. He must not have because Kelly responded instantly.

“Honestly. I’ve never been pissed at you, Nick,” Kelly said, reaching across the center console and squeezing Nick’s arm. The warmth of Kelly’s hand seeped through Nick’s jacket and his shirt and all Nick could think was how much he wished that neither layer of fabric was there. “I just…I don’t like thinking you see me as some stupid kid is all.”  

Swallowing hard, Nick concentrated to make sure what he wanted to say actually came out the way he meant it. “I don’t. And you’re not. That’s not how I see you at all.”

Not even close. Not even a little bit. Neither stupid nor a kid. But now was not the time to dwell on how Nick  _did_  see Kelly.

“All right. Well…good to know.”

Kelly slowly pulled his hand away and they spent the remaining minute of the trip in silence. They pulled up to the house and Nick parked off to the side of the wide gravel clearing the Gradys’ used as a parking lot/driveway.

Nick took a long breath and looked at Kelly. “Inside or out?”

“Out,” Kelly said, nodding toward one of the older sheds on the property. “I put it back there to make sure Jack and Lindsay didn’t find it.”

“Let’s go then.”

Bypassing the house completely, Nick and Kelly hiked down the slope toward the flat patch of land where Earl Grady had built a couple of storage sheds over the years. Some were in better shape than others and it was the one farthest along in the stages of decay that Kelly aimed them toward. He’d hidden the gun under an upside-down cracked ceramic flowerpot in the back of the shed. The magazine he’d placed on the opposite end of the shelf, wrapped in an old rag and stuffed behind a metal toolbox. Once he had everything, he used the rag to handle it all, loading the magazine, checking the safety, and passing the gun to Nick wrapped in the gross cloth.

Kelly started to take the new gun’s case out of his backpack and Nick knew without asking that Kelly planned to place the pieces in the same place.

It was all good for gun safety.

It was all bad for Kelly’s safety.

Nick looked at the hiding place and back at the house, calculating how long it would take Kelly to get out of the house, run down the slope, dig out the gun, load it, and fire at someone.

The number was way too high for Nick’s peace of mind.

“It might be better if you kept it closer.”

Kelly froze in the middle of unpacking the new gun, looking up at Nick with suspicion in his eyes. “Why?”

“Because I need you to be careful, okay? Like  _really_  careful.”

Straightening, Kelly narrowed his eyes, his intense blue-green-gray gaze taking in every nuance of Nick’s expression. “Why? What happened? What aren’t you telling me?”

As quickly as he could—kind of like ripping off a Band-Aid—Nick spilled everything Owen had told him. Kelly didn’t go pale like he had when he found out about the gun’s history. Instead, he looked  _pissed_.

“Okay.” Kelly took a slow breath, his eyes squeezed shut for a second. “Okay. Remember how I said I’ve never been pissed at you?”

“Yeah.” Nick held his breath in preparation. He knew what was coming.

“That no longer applies.” Kelly’s eyes opened. They  _blazed_. “You didn’t just figure this out this morning. You’ve known for  _two days_  that someone with more firepower than the Boston Police Department was gunning for me and the kids and anyone who might know where we were and you said  _nothing_?”

“I had people watching out for you guys!” Nick fought the urge to pull his head in like a turtle trying to climb into its shell, but something about Kelly stalking closer with righteous fury in his eyes scared Nick more than anything else he’d faced in his life. He wanted to shrink down into the dirt floor and disappear.

Nick expected yelling. He expected insults. He expected an in-depth explanation of every single way Nick had fucked up.

What he got was a vicious right cross that connected solidly with his jaw and sent Nick stumbling backward, his vision spotted with white.

Nick braced himself against the wall, head down and shoulders up to take the next blow. The one that never came.

Slowly, hesitantly, Nick straightened, glancing up at Kelly. He stood a couple feet away, his arms crossed and a glower still marring a face much more suited to smiling, but he didn’t look like he had any intention of continuing what he’d started.

Blood pooled in Nick’s mouth from where he’d bitten his cheek hard enough to break skin and he could already feel the spot where a nice, colorful bruise would form soon. Lifting his hand to his lips, Nick checked for blood. It came away clean.

“Feel better?” Nick asked.

Kelly nodded. “A little, yeah. As long as you promise me you will never do that again.”

“I was trying to keep you from worrying about something you couldn’t control, Kels.” Nick leaned against the shelving unit, watching Kelly carefully. “You’re under enough pressure already. How was adding to it going to help?”

“It wouldn’t’ve. But you don’t get to make that call for me. You didn’t even  _ask_.” A little of the anger leeched out of Kelly’s expression, letting Nick see the hurt and the fear lingering underneath. “If I couldn’t have handled knowing about some nebulous danger, I would have told you to hold off, but you took that choice away from me completely. You can’t just let me wander around blind like that. You can’t let  _the kids_  walk around thinking everything is okay, Nick!”

Nick’s stomach clenched and he closed his eyes. He’d been so worried about Kelly and the gun, he hadn’t even thought about the kids. Not really. Not in detail. He hadn’t thought about the fact that whoever had used this gun before Kelly had already used it to hurt kids to get what they want. If they’d done it once, chances were good that they’d be willing to do it again.

A hand slid around the back of Nick’s neck and his eyes sprang open. Kelly stood less than a foot away from Nick, his eyes serious but not angry. Not anymore.

“You gotta promise me, Nick. Promise me you won’t keep something like this from me. I know you were trying to protect me, but I don’t need protection. I may need  _help_ , but I don’t need you to swoop in and save me. Okay? Especially not from a mess I made for myself.”

Nick stared into Kelly’s chameleon eyes for a moment, studying the serious expression in them now and remembering the desperate determination he saw in Kelly the night they met. Kelly was right. He didn’t need protecting. There was something about Nick, though, something in the way he was made and the way life had treated him up to this point, that made it a nearly impossible urge to fight.

“I’ll try,” Nick told Kelly quietly. “Okay? That’s…I don’t think I can promise that, Kels, but I can try.”

For a second, Kelly frowned, but then he sighed and squeezed the back of Nick’s neck. “Good enough for now, I guess.”

His hands slid away and Nick instantly missed the touch, but he held himself in place and tamped down on those thoughts. Instead he cleared his throat and made himself ask, “So what do you want to do? How do you want to handle this?”

Kelly relaxed just a little bit. Rubbing his face with one hand, he shrugged one shoulder. “How likely are the Gradys to flip out if we tell them what’s going on?”

“Not very. Earl and Chester are both ex-military and Mara is a lot tougher than she looks.” Nick smirked. “She had to be to put up with Ty and Deuce growing up.”

“True.” Kelly attempted to smile, but it was a travesty compared to his normal expression. It faltered just as quickly as it had appeared. “How much…how much does Mara already know about…what happened before I came here?”

Nick rubbed his hand over his mouth. “They know the basics. Had to explain how I even met you.”

Kelly took a long, slow breath and Nick watched the air expand his chest and shift the muscles under his shirt. “Then I think we tell them everything and we get them to talk to the teachers at Jack and Lindsay’s school to make sure  _no one_  except Mara, Earl, Deuce, you, and me have permission to pick them up from school. Like, ID check  _everyone_  every single time.” He bit his lip, suddenly seeming nervous. “Do you think they’d be willing to do that?”

“I think so. But it might be a better idea to tell the school there’s a possible threat from your old foster family instead of the Russian mob. Telling that story might generate some questions you don’t want to answer.”

“Right.” Kelly nodded, settling a little bit and seeming more comfortable with the idea. “Okay. We can do that. That should work. Right?”

It might and it might not. But the last thing Nick was going to right now was sow doubt in Kelly’s already worried mind.

“We’ll make it work, babe. They’ll be okay. You’ll all be all right.”

Even if Nick had to give up everything to make sure of it. 


	15. Chapter 15

The conversation with Mara and Earl had been easier than Kelly had thought. They almost reacted like they’d been expecting this kind of news. Okay, well, maybe not the Russian mob connection, but definitely _something_  wicked this way coming.

The way the Gradys mobilized around Kelly and the kids, though? That was what finally started to melt the chilling fear Kelly had lived with since arriving in Boston, the fear that his world was a split second away from utter devastation. They made plans and backup plans and fallback plans and worst-case-scenario plans and not once did Earl or Mara suggest that Kelly hide or that he wasn’t capable of protecting himself from what was coming.

It almost made him feel like he  _could_  handle it.

“Just remember what I told you, okay?” Kelly told Jack and Lindsay. They stood in the elementary school’s drop-off circle and he knelt in front of them. He’d explained everything to them already but reinforcing the importance of the situation was  _not_  a bad thing.

Jack’s lip trembled and he held onto Kelly’s hand tight enough to hurt. “It’s gonna be okay, right Kelly? We won’t have to run again, will we?”  

“No. No more running.” He’d said it last night, but for the first time Kelly started to believe it. They had Nick and the Gradys and Ty and Zane and, finally, Kelly believed that they wanted to help Kelly. Not just for five minutes to make themselves feel like good people, but for forever. “But to stay safe, you have to keep your promises. No talking to  _anyone_  but the kids in your class and your teacher and family, okay? Don’t listen to anyone else and don’t follow anyone else, even if they try to tell you I told them it’s fine.”

“Is Freddie coming to get us?” Lindsay whispered, looking as scared as she had when they’d been living under that bastard’s thumb.

“No, I don’t think he’ll ever come near us again, but there’s someone like him who…there’s something I had that they want and they’re like Freddie. They won’t care about hurting other people to make me listen.” Kelly swallowed, trying to stop the parade of fearsome images that rolled like a slideshow through his head. “If I know you’re doing everything you can to stay safe, I can make sure that these people can’t ever hurt us. So promise me?”

“We promise, Kelly.” Jack was still holding onto his hand when Lindsay threw her arms around Kelly’s neck and clung like a spider monkey.

“Don’t disappear, okay?” The words were whispered and quick, like a confession, and then Lindsay let go and ran, fleeing for the cheerful comfort of her classroom.

“I won’t disappear,” he promised Jack who was still standing there waiting for an answer.

Jack took a deep breath, nodded once, and then finally let go of Kelly’s hand, walking toward his teacher like a soldier heading into a battle he’s determined to fight even though he isn’t sure he can win.

“They’re strong kids,” Deuce said when Kelly got back into the car. “And James promised to keep an eye on them while they’re at school. They’ll be all right.”

Kelly nodded, keeping his eyes wide open in an effort to dry out the tears he could feel building. They’d seriously lucked out that James Isles, someone Earl had known for a long time—an ex-solider turned school administrator—worked at Jack and Lindsay’s school.

The first few hours passed in a slow-moving daze, one that left Kelly strangely alert and lost at the same time. He remembered what the people around them were wearing and who bumped into him in the hallway and how many people met his eyes, but he had no idea what announcement had made the entire class laugh first thing this morning or what any of his first three teachers had talked about or what he had said to the girl who asked him a question during third period that made her look at him like he was Hannibal. 

It wasn’t until lunch that he felt like he was completely in tune and in time with the world around him. Probably because there was nothing to block out. No one to ignore. Everything had to be attended to in a place where the possibility of danger was ten thousand times higher than anywhere else on campus. The room was crowded and noisy. People came and went constantly. It was so hard to keep track of any of it. Kelly felt like he was being pulled in twenty different directions.

Then his phone buzzed in his pocket.

Mara and Earl had given it to him last week, an inexpensive phone with a limited number of minutes, plenty of texting, and no data. Enough to keep him in touch with the people who mattered and give him a way to call for help if he needed it. There were only ten numbers programmed into the phone. The one coming up on the screen now was Nick’s.

Nick had only called him a couple of times. Never during school hours. Even though Kelly tried to keep the immediate chill of fear at bay, his fingers trembled when he hit the button to accept the call.

“Hey, Nick, I—”

“Get out.  _Now_!”

Kelly didn’t hesitate. Grabbing his backpack and abandoning his lunch, Kelly ran.

“Get Deuce and get the fuck off campus!” Nick was nearly panting into the phone. “They showed up at the school and tried to grab Lindsay and—”

“ _What_? Where is she?” Kelly screamed as he bolted through the halls.

“I said  _tried_!”

Kelly slid to a stop in front of Deuce’s classroom, throwing the door open and frantically searching for Deuce. He was already standing. The teacher was already yelling. Both of them ignored him. Deuce grabbed his backpack and jumped over his desk, running for the door. Kelly didn’t wait. He turned and sprinted. One more stop and he’d picked up Kiko before heading for the parking lot. He heard their footsteps pounding behind him and Kiko’s teacher shouting for security, her voice echoing off the tile floor.

“Get the kids and hole up at the house,” Nick huffed through the phone. “I’ll meet you guys there in half an hour.” 

“Where are you?”

“Just picking up reinforcements.” His voice sounded both grim and viciously gleeful. “I’ll be there, Kels. I promise.”

The line went dead.

“Get us to the kids,” Kelly yelled at Deuce as they scrambled into the car.

“What happened?” Deuce demanded. He slammed the car into reverse and then floored the accelerator, handling the car like a rally racer.

“Nick called. Someone tried to grab the kids.”

“Oh God.” Kiko started crying in the back seat.

“Nick wants us to pick them up and get back to the house  _now_.”

“What’s he doing?” Deuce asked, his attention wholly locked on the road and both hands gripping the wheel tight.

“He said he’s gathering reinforcements. He said he’d meet us there in half an hour.” He  _promised_  he’d meet them there in half an hour. Kelly held onto that promise like a lifeline. Like it was his  _last_  lifeline. Nick didn’t promise anything he didn’t intend to do.

It only took a few minutes to reach the school. Kelly bolted into the main office where Earl’s friend had the kids waiting for him. They were in a windowless room with a security guard and James, the burly ex-soldier, standing guard. Lindsay—who hadn’t cried since the day she arrived at Freddies’—burst into tears and ran straight into Kelly, clinging to him. He hefted her into his arms, glad she was  _just_  small enough for him to carry, and held out a hand to Jack. Without a word, the security guard cleared their path and James brought up the rear, guarding their flank, making sure they reached their car safely.

“I’ll follow you to Earl’s,” James said. “Drive like the hounds of hell are after you, Deuce. Don’t you stop for anything.”

“Why aren’t we going to the cops?” Kiko asked as Deuce squealed out of the parking lot.

Kelly braced himself on the door as Deuce slammed into a turn. “Because we don’t know which ones are working for the wrong people.”

In the backseat, Jack was stoic and stiff, his eyes wide as he stared out the window in search for signs of danger. Kiko sat huddled against the passenger side door shaky but just as alert as Jack. Lindsay kept crying for Mama Mara. The sound of her sobs nearly broke Kelly’s heart.

Except for a quick glance back to make sure everyone was okay, Kelly kept his eyes on the mirrors and the road, searching for anything out of the ordinary. Anything that might be Novikov’s men approaching. Everything was fine until they hit the halfway point between school and the Gradys.

“We’ve got company,” Kelly warned Deuce as soon as he spotted the shiny black sedan swerving dangerously through traffic.

Deuce’s eyes shot to the rearview. “Should I try to lose them?”

“No point. They know where you guys live. Just get there  _fast_.”

Clenching his jaw, Deuce managed to pull another burst of speed from the already zooming car. He and Kelly flinched, and the kids in the back screamed, when three gunshots and an explosion boomed in quick succession behind them.

Kelly spun in his seat, his body tense and his pulse racing.  _Please let James be all right_.

James’s shiny red pickup was catching up to Deuce’s car. The sedan was already falling away behind them, the hood of the car engulfed in flames.

One down. Who knew how many to go.

Kelly wasn’t naïve enough to believe that was the last of them.

“Who the  _fuck_  did you piss off?” Deuce growled as he spun the car into a tight turn and took the narrow road up to his house  _way_  too fast.

“I told you! The fucking Russian mob!”

“Yeah, but this isn’t the retaliation for some lowlife gunhand, Kelly! Whoever’s fingerprints are on that gun must be the fucking Godfather himself for this level of heat!”

The last turn sent the car skidding, loose gravel spraying out from the spinning tires. The kids in the back screamed. Kelly slammed his hand on the dash and the window to keep from smacking his head against the glass. Deuce cursed, but he kept the car aimed for the space closest to the porch and managed to brake just in time to bring the passenger side of the car in line with the steps up to the house.

Earl, Chester, Ty, and Zane were all standing there waiting for them. Every single one was armed for rabid, super-strength bear.

“Nick isn’t here yet?” Kelly asked as soon as he opened the car door.

Ty shook his head. “He called us. Said he’d meet us here.”

Unease stirred up the acid in Kelly’s stomach. A half hour hadn’t quite passed yet. It was okay.

It was okay.

It  _was_.

Nick had promised.

He’d be here.

They ushered the kids into the basement where Mara, Chester, and James would stand guard. As soon as they were settled, Kelly bounded up the stairs to rejoin Deuce, Ty, Zane, and Earl.

“Is staying here a good idea?” Kelly asked when he joined them near the front of the house. “Are we safe?”

“Ain’t many defensible positions in the city,” Earl said. “We got a better chance to see them coming up here cause there aren’t many who knows this land better than me and my boys.”

Kelly nodded, accepting his word in this instance. He had to. Earl was risking his entire family to protect Kelly from a stupid, preventable mess.

“I’m sorry,” Kelly whispered, his voice so thick it was almost indecipherable. “I’m sorry I dragged your family into this. You guys don’t have to do this. It isn’t your fight.”

“Boy, anyone who murders families and threatens innocent kids needs to be taken out.” He checked the shotgun he held in his hands and pumped to load the barrel. “I am more than willing to do the honors.”

“Bloodthirsty old man,” Ty muttered, barely concealed pride in his voice. Earl whacked him upside the head anyway. He was grinning like a madman when he did it, though.

“All ya’ll are crazy,” Deuce said as he loaded a magazine for the gun sitting on the coffee table.

“Yeah,” Ty agreed with a maniacal grin. “The  _fun_  kind of crazy.”

Kelly attempted a smile, but he didn’t feel it. Nick still wasn’t here. The longer he stayed absent, the more Kelly couldn’t keep from worrying that something had gone horribly wrong.

But he’d promised. He’d  _promised_  he’d be here. There were still three minutes left until Nick was officially late.

A green SUV pulled up the drive, moving quickly but not dangerously so.

“Whatcha think about this?” Earl asked Ty as they all peeked out at the approaching vehicle. “Friend or foe?”

“Nick did say he was getting reinforcements,” Kelly said.

“I think that’s Mikey,” Ty said, peering around the curtain, his gun at the ready.

Next to him, Zane nodded. “He works for Paddy.”

Earl grumbled something about bedfellows and necessity, but didn’t pull the trigger when the three guys in the SUV climbed out and strode toward the house, their eyes scanning the trees like they knew there might be danger lurking there. All three of them carried large black duffle bags.

“They don’t look like they’re gearing up to fight their way in,” Deuce said as they got closer.

“Willing to bet our lives on that, son?” Earl asked.

Deuce looked again and nodded. “Yes.”

“Then open the door. Boys, you aim but don’t fire unless they draw on you, you hear me?” Earl said to Ty, Zane, and Kelly.

“Yes, sir,” they answered simultaneously.

Deuce waited for a signal from Earl before he swung the door open. One of the guy’s had his hand raised to knock.

“Mikey?” Ty asked him.

“Tyler, right?” Mikey grinned, the expression broad and surprisingly child-like for a guy who had to top six-foot-two. “Did Nicky park around back? I don’t see his car.”

Kelly’s stomach dropped to his feet.

“Get in and shut the door,” Earl ordered.

The boys did as they were told until there was a loose circle of men who all towered over Kelly standing in the Gradys’ living room.

“Where’s Nick?” Kelly asked the one Ty had called Mikey.

Mikey’s grin faded, confusion taking over. “He ain’t here? He left for this place five minutes ahead of us. The way he was driving, he shoulda been here by now.”

 _Oh God_.

Kelly was looking through the doorway into the next room, right at the microwave’s digital clock, when the time ticked one minute ahead. Nick was late. Five minutes late now. And his reinforcements said he should be here.

Kelly shared a glance with Ty and knew he wasn’t alone. He wasn’t the only one with a tight ball of fear now residing in his chest.

Nick had broken a promise.

There was no way he wasn’t in trouble.

And Kelly had no fucking clue how to get him out of it.


	16. Chapter 16

Nick remembered fire. And broken glass. And squealing tires. And a massive truck driving on the wrong side of the road.

Not in that order though. He was pretty sure it had gone the other way around.

He just couldn’t remember what had happened after that.

Nick shifted his weight and tried to open his eyes. Pain shot through Nick’s entire left side, sharp and nearly burning. He gasped. His eyes shot open and then closed again when the bright light of the bare bulb above his head nearly blinded him. The disorientation of the vision whiteout and the nausea of the rush of pain upended Nick’s stomach. He collapsed forward as much as he could. When he puked, the mess barely cleared his knees.

A door opened to his left. “He’s up, boss.”

The accent was all he needed to tell him where he was. Russian. Novikov. Novikov’s guys had grabbed him. He was probably going to die today. And he’d broken his promise to Kelly. He wouldn’t be there.

That thought hurt far worse than the first.

The door he couldn’t turn enough to see opened again and footsteps echoed—dress shoes against the concrete floor.

“You should have left well enough alone, Nicholai.” The goon’s accent had been heavy, like he’d just immigrated, but Novikov’s words lilted and rolled off his tongue, especially when he changed Nick’s name to the Russian variation. He was educated. Refined. Cold. Deadly. “We had no issue with your boss until he decided to meddle in something that was not his concern.”

Nick had to spit to clear his mouth before he could talk. “Paddy has nothing to do with this.”

“You’re well known, Nicholai. You follow Paddy’s orders and no one else’s. You expect me to believe that you have been acting without his knowledge, permission, or full instruction?” Novikov  _tsked_. “You picked the wrong family to interfere with and the wrong lie to tell.”

Oh, hell. Paddy would be  _pissed_  if Nick had inadvertently dragged him into a turf war with the Russians, but all Nick really felt was relief. He thought this was about Paddy. He didn’t seem focused on Kelly at all.

“Who is the boy to Paddy?” 

Nick’s blood ran cold. For the first time, he was glad of his injuries. They muddled his words and hid the anger and the fear in his voice when he asked, “What boy?”

“Don’t play stupid, Nicholai. It suits you as poorly as lying does.”

Shaking his head, Nick spat again. The taste in his mouth was awful. Blood and bile mixing into a near-noxious sludge. “I’m  _not_  stupid. I’m  _definitely_  not lying. Paddy has nothing to do with this and I don’t have a fucking clue what you’re talking about.”

His vision hadn’t completely cleared. He didn’t see the fist coming.

Nick’s head snapped back so hard his vision went white and he had to fight off another wave of nausea. Before he could brace himself, a second strike slammed into his ribs and someone shoved him forward so hard it almost pulled both shoulders out of their sockets.

Sucking in air, Nick blinked quickly, desperate to clear his vision. Another blow would come any second. They would rain down until Nick couldn’t breathe anymore. He had to take advantage of the option while he had it.

Except another blow never came.

In a few seconds, Nick could see at least a little of the dark room, enough to make out Novikov and his henchmen. His shoulders ached and his ribs burned when he breathed, but otherwise the pain was manageable.

But he was still trapped. He was still tied to a chair in the windowless basement of who-knows-where facing who-knows-how-many enemies and he didn’t even know how long he’d been here.

“So tell me now.” Novikov adjusted his black leather gloves. “Who is that boy to Paddy and why does he have you going to such lengths to protect him?”

Nick quickly ran down everything he knew about Novikov and the Russian mob. Novikov wasn’t known for patience or forgiveness or…anything but pure, vicious, ruthlessness. Nick had been in trouble before, but this? This was in a different league entirely. This was not going to be easy.

Nick steeled himself to lie like he’d never lied before and, silently, he prayed.

 _God, please let Kelly stay where he was safe_.  


	17. Chapter 17

This was, without any doubt at all, the  _stupidest_  thing Kelly had ever done. Stupider running than running away from Freddie’s house instead of going straight to social services for help. Stupider than picking a gun up off the street. Stupider than using that gun to commit armed robbery. Stupider than thinking he could make it to Florida with five thousand dollars and a lot of prayers.

Yeah. This move? This move topped all of that.

The plan had formed when Ty had caught Mikey and his friends up to the current state of affairs. They hadn’t known much about why they were there, only that Nick had called for their help. Apparently that had been enough for them.

When Kelly explained, what had happened—what  _was_  happening—the guys had instantly started bitching about Novikov and his entire operation. They’d been vague, practically useless, until one of them growled, “Fucking bastards! I don’t understand why Paddy don’t go down to the fucking Kingston Exchange and fucking clean house.”

_Kingston Exchange. Kingston Exchange. Kingston Exchange._

The words had repeated in Kelly’s head like a mantra. A prayer. His one saving grace.

It had only taken him a second alone on the Gradys’ computer to find an address for the place, another minute to write down the directions, and a few clicks to delete that one site from the computer’s history.

Now he just had to get there.

He took a small handgun and his Glock from the Gradys’, palmed the keys to Deuce’s car, told everyone he needed five minutes alone, and slipped out the side door. All had been quiet since Mikey and his friends had arrived and he made it to the car without being spotted. As soon as he turned it on, though, the front door slammed open.

“Kelly! Kelly, no!” Earl bellowed as the tires spit gravel.

It wasn’t until he was on the main road connecting to the Gradys’ driveway that he noticed the Mustang behind him. He half-expected Ty to charge in front of him and cut him off, forcing him to stop, but Ty and Zane just followed close behind as he sped into the city.

It wasn’t until he took a wrong turn near the end of the trip that Ty cut in front of him, swerving the car and forcing Kelly almost on to the sidewalk. He tried to swerve around them, but he was stuck between Ty’s Mustang and a cement lightpole. There was nowhere to go.

Zane stared at him through their windows, but Ty got out of the car and stalked around to the passenger door, glaring at Kelly the whole way.

“Unlock the car,” Ty ordered through the window.

Gripping the steering wheel, Kelly shook his head. They would stop him. If he let them in the car they would try to stop him. He glanced behind himself, ready to shove the car into reverse and escape. Zane was standing in the way.

Shit.

Ty’s fist slammed on the window. “Unlock it or I will break it open!”

Kelly dropped his forehead to the steering wheel and unlocked the car.

As soon as the lock clicked, Ty wrenched the door open and dropped into the passenger seat.

“You are one batshit crazy fucker, you know that?”

Blinking, Kelly raised his head and stared at Ty. He honestly couldn’t tell if the guy was pissed off or impressed. Maybe a little of both. “He’s in trouble because of me. I have to help him.”

Ty nodded. “Like I said, batshit crazy.”

What was happening? So far, it didn’t exactly sound like Ty planned on stopping him.

“The craziest part of this plan was that you not only thought you could pull it off yourself, you actually seemed to think that we wouldn’t help you.”

“What?”

“Nick has been my best friend since we were kids, moron. Why the fuck wouldn’t I want to help you get him back?”

“I…I don’t…” Kelly’s brain felt like it had completely burned out. He was surprised there wasn’t smoke pouring out his ears. He couldn’t think. Forming words was  _definitely_  beyond him. “I…”

“You don’t know me very well, which is the only reason I’m not going to kick your ass for thinking I’m that much of a coward.”

“I thought you’d stop me from going,” Kelly finally managed to say.

“Like I said, you don’t know me very well.” Ty leaned out the window and yelled, “Zane! Get up here!” When he pulled his head back inside the car, he jerked his thumb at his boyfriend. “He may not look it, but he’s got a mind for strategy to rival a general.”

“I’m not sure how I should take that, doll,” Zane said as he leaned down to talk through Ty’s open window. “Why can’t you ever just give me a straight compliment?”

“Cause you’re too twisted for a straight anything.” Ty snapped his fingers and glared. “What’s the best plan of attack, Garrett?”

“We need to figure out where Nick is being held before we can do anything.” He looked grim as he considered what they had to do. “We’ll never find him if we go in guns blazing.”

“So what the fuck do we do, Lone Star?”

For a few seconds, it looked like Zane had completely spaced out. His eyes went distant and he stared at the glove box like it had the meaning of life and the account number of a billion-dollar bank account written there. Then a smile started spreading across his face.

He hadn’t even said anything yet when Ty groaned.

“God you’re hot when you go all evil genius on me.” Ty grabbed Zane by the back of the neck and yanked him closer for a quick, dirty kiss. “Now tell me how we’re going to save my friend.”

***

Kelly walked into the massive office building alone. 

There was a bank of elevators open for public use, but down a parallel hall were two express elevators that shot straight to the penthouse level. Straight to Novik Enterprises. Those elevators were guarded by two men in suits who were way too broad shouldered, scarred, and mean to be businessmen.

 _Nick needs your help_ , Kelly reminded himself when fear and panic almost turned him into a puddle of quivering goo in the middle of the open lobby.

Pretending a confidence he didn’t feel, Kelly walked right to the guards.

“Appointment?” Goon One asked, eyebrow rising skeptically.

“Tell Mr. Novikov that Kelly Abbott is here to see him. Tell him that he has something of mine and that I may be willing to trade for something of his. Something I think he’d very much like to get back.”

Their eyes widened. With a quick glance, they made a decision and the one who hadn’t spoken yet stepped back into the hall for the illusion of privacy, pulling out his cell phone. The call was quick, a few sentences on either side of the conversation at most, but the effect was immediate. The man on the phone tensed and he unstrapped his gun holster. He didn’t draw the weapon, though.

“Do you have it with you?” Goon Two asked as he approached Kelly.

“No. I’m not a complete moron. It’s somewhere safe and it’ll stay there until I get what he has back.”  He had one of Zane’s knives hidden away and Zane and Ty had Kelly’s duplicate Glock. Kelly really hoped there wasn’t some symbol or brand or identifying mark on the mob’s gun because he had no goddamn clue what Nick had done with it after Kelly gave it to him. If the copy didn’t fool them long enough to get Nick out of there then…

Kelly tried not to think about what might happen then.

“I need to know my friend is alive and well—I need to  _see_  him alive and well—before I tell you where you can find what you’re looking for.”

The goons shared another look, then their phones chirped. They didn’t look any less grim when they checked the message displayed there.

"Mr. Novikov is sending a car to retrieve you,” Goon Two said. “Dominic will escort you.”

Goon One—Dominic, Kelly supposed—gripped Kelly’s shoulder and steered him out of the building, and onto the street. He tried not to, but Kelly couldn’t completely suppress the instinct to glance up the street to where Ty and Zane were waiting in Deuce’s car. The look lasted long enough for him to spot them in his periphery, but he made sure to continue the look past them, focusing instead on the security camera hanging on the outside of the jewelry store on the ground level of the Kingston Exchange. He doubted it would help him any to have this moment caught on camera. Hell, there could probably be a news crew following him recording the whole thing and it still wouldn’t help.

Novikov owned half the police force.

A few minutes later, a sleek black sedan pulled up to the curb and Dominic—who’d never let go of Kelly’s shoulder—pushed him toward it. Kelly opened the door, barely getting his hand out of the way before Dominic shoved him inside. There were two rows of seats facing each other and Kelly was unceremoniously dumped into the rear-facing seat.

The door closed behind Dominic and the car slipped into traffic. Obviously the driver knew his orders already.

“Give me your cell phone and any weapons you’ve got on you.” When Kelly hesitated, Dominic’s expression turned from bored to annoyed. “If I have to search you for it, you won’t like it.”

Kelly handed over his cheap phone and the small handgun he’d tucked into his belt. His foot slid on the floormats and he distinctly  _didn’t_ look down at his boot. Where Zane’s smart phone was hidden. They’d downloaded an app that would let Ty track the phone. Kelly just really,  _really_ hoped the goons didn’t make him strip. They’d find the knife he had strapped under his shirt to the side of his chest, too.

Dominic kept an eye on Kelly during the ride, but Kelly could tell that the big guy didn’t see him as a threat. Kelly tried to ignore him completely, focusing instead out the window and trying to figure out what section of town they were in. They left behind the slick office buildings and quaint shops of downtown quickly, heading for the outskirts and the port area. After a few minutes, they passed through a guard gate letting them into the commercial section of a harbor and the car slowed, rolling through the industrial area until they pulled up to a concrete building. Offices lined one side and the rest of it looked like some kind of warehouse space.

“Out,” Dominic ordered, pushing the door open and waiting for Kelly to move. He practically had to climb over the goon’s lap to get out and it was hard to resist the urge to land a hit or two as he passed. He had to behave, though. At least for now. Because Nick was in there somewhere and Kelly had to stay smart enough to get him out. Zane had given them a plan. Kelly had to follow it.

Taking a breath and repressing the urge to shudder when Dominic’s hand landed on his shoulder again, Kelly walked through the warehouse door.

This might work. This  _had to_  work. Either that or Kelly and Nick were about to die. 


	18. Chapter 18

Nick was a breath away from sobbing when Kelly walked into the room.

_No! No, no, no, nononononono…_

Just seeing him here in this place he’d wanted nothing more than to keep him from was worse than all of the punches he’d taken. Then Kelly met his eyes.

Nick wanted to disappear completely when Kelly’s wide, shocked, terrified, angry eyes locked on his. He’d never,  _ever_  wanted Kelly to see him like this. Torn and broken and bleeding and bruised and battered and bleeding…had he mentioned bleeding yet? There was so much blood.

The knives had come out to play.

“Mr. Abbott claimed that I had something which belonged to him,” Novikov said, smiling at Nick. “He’s quite possessive of you for a stranger.”

 _Run_ , Nick wanted to scream.  _Run you brave, stupid, beautiful idiot._

Kelly tore his eyes away from Nick and Nick watched his friend change. His eyes went cold and his shoulders pulled back, his weight shifted over his center and his hands flexed like he wanted to reach for a weapon. Out of everyone in this damp, cold, awful room, Kelly was the shortest, the lightest, and the least experienced in the illegal. Remembering his accuracy the night of the robbery and everything he’d learned about Kelly since then… The thought of Kelly on a mission he was determined to complete scared Nick more than anything anyone else in this room was capable of.

“Let me guess?” Kelly’s voice was as icy as his eyes. “You got nothing out of him?”

“He was surprisingly silent.” Novikov said it like he was commenting on the weather.

“That’s because he doesn’t know shit.” Kelly crossed his arms and glared at Novikov. “You grabbed him because he was the one who ran ballistics?” He waited until Novikov nodded slowly before he continued. “He ran ballistics off of bullets I shot at  _him_ , moron. He and Paddy have been trying to recruit me for the last few weeks. The gun has never even been in his possession. He doesn’t have it and he doesn’t know where it is. It was my bargaining chip trying to get a better deal out of them.”

Nick’s mind felt slow and stuffed full of cotton, but he remembered enough to know Kelly was lying. He  _knew_  Kelly was lying and he still kind of believed him.

The weirdest thing was Kelly was telling almost the same story Nick had created.

Everyone in the room had bristled at the insult to Novikov, but the guy seemed amused by Kelly instead of insulted. “You still have it, then?”

“Not with me. I don’t feel like dying today.”

“Then coming here may not have been the best of choices,” Novikov said, looking almost regretful.

Kelly snorted. “You have no idea what my choices were.” 

A little of the urbanity dropped from Novikov’s expression and Nick caught a glimpse of the man ruthless enough to control a crime family spread across three continents. “Where is the gun?”

“I’m not really sure I want to hand it over now.” Kelly jerked his chin toward Nick. “He’s not exactly in one piece.”

Novikov gave them a shark’s smile—all teeth and hunger and blood. “But he’s still breathing. A fact that can change very quickly if you don’t give me what I want.” 

“Kill him and you’ll never see it.” Kelly didn’t smile. He looked even more vicious than Novikov.

“If I kill you both, I don’t have to worry about finding it. It will simply disappear.”

“You could do that. But I left a letter for a good friend of mine. If I don’t come back, they’ll find the letter, find the gun, and they’ll ruin you.” Kelly smiled, his eyes full of malice. “You’ve got resources, but not even you can keep an eye on the entire city of Boston.”

Nick held his breath as everything and everyone in the room seemed to pause for a second. Kelly had come prepared and made his play and now everyone—Nick and Kelly especially—were waiting to see how Novikov would react. They were waiting to see exactly how much blood they would be cleaning up off this floor. Nick tried to watch Novikov, but his eyes kept straying back to Kelly, back to the guy who’d stormed into his life, guns blazing, and turned his priorities inside out. The guy he’d been willing to die to protect. The guy Nick had honestly believed he would never see again.

Even with most of his attention on Kelly, Nick saw the tightening around Novikov’s eyes and knew what was about to happen. He knew one of his worst nightmares was about to come true.

He was going to watch someone he loved die and he wouldn’t be able to do a goddamn thing to save them.

Novikov pulled a gun in swift, practiced motions and aimed the barrel at Kelly’s head. “You try my patience,  _rebenok_.” His control was beginning to crack and his accent got thicker with every second. “I begin to think that I would rather take my chances just to see your life end in blood.” 

Kelly was still smiling. “Bad choice, asshole.” 

And that’s when the wall exploded.


	19. Chapter 19

Kelly heard the crack—like a sledgehammer striking marble—and ran toward Nick. He barely got to him before the entire west wall exploded. Tackling Nick and the chair, he collapsed on top of him, screaming when something heavy and hot slammed into his side. Guns fired, the noises muffled by the ringing in Kelly’s ears, making the fight feel distant. All that mattered was gaining the strength to sit up and untie Nick.

Heaving himself up and ignoring the mix of aches, bruises, and burning pain running up and down his left side, Kelly glanced at the gaping hole in the wall.

Ty and Zane stood at either side, firing diagonally into the room. In the middle, wearing full riot gear and carrying massive guns were three guys Kelly hadn’t met. He knew who they were, though. Ty had planned on calling in Sidewinder.

Kelly carefully cut through the zip ties locking Nick to the chair and grabbed Nick around the waist, heaving him to his feet.

“C’mon, Nick. Time to go.” Kelly got them to their feet. He screamed and nearly dropped Nick when a bullet grazed his upper arm.

Nick made a noise that almost sounded like Kelly’s name. Gritting his teeth, Kelly ran for the hole in the wall, dragging Nick along. Less than halfway there, Sidewinder surrounded them, two of the guys guarding their backs and one stepping in on Nick’s other side, carefully helping Kelly carry him away from hell.

Kelly’s ears were still ringing, but it wasn’t quite drowning the world out anymore. He heard fewer gunshots. He heard more shouting. He thought that, in the distance, he heard sirens.

“Get him out of here!” Ty screamed, pointing at Kelly and Nick.

Sidewinder was already moving them toward a massive black SUV. They loaded Nick and Kelly into the back and as soon as the doors closed, the driver slammed the car into gear and raced toward the hospital. Kelly couldn’t pay attention to anything but Nick.

He ripped off his jacket and then his shirt, using the cloth to wipe away some of the blood, looking for the wounds underneath it all. Looking to see how bad the damage was. He had cuts up and down his arms, gouged into his chest and across his shoulders. The sight of so many lacerations and the knowledge of _why_  he had any of them made Kelly want to puke. His eyes burned. He wanted to go back to that warehouse and slit the throat of every single person who had stood there and let this happen to Nick. He stuffed all of that down to deal with later, far more worried about the way Nick started to tremble underneath his hands when Kelly pressed down on the deepest of the cuts.

Nick’s lips moved, but Kelly couldn’t make out the words.

“What?” He leaned closer, so close that Nick’s lips were almost brushing Kelly’s ear.

“You’re bleeding.”

Kelly looked down, remembering the graze. With the realization came the pain, a throbbing burn that radiated up and down his arm. He swallowed hard and shook his head, brushing a hand through Nick’s hair. “I think I’ll live. You’re the one we’re worried about.”

Nick’s lips almost made it into a smile. “It’s just a flesh wound.”

A breathless, desperate laugh escaped Kelly’s lips. “Tell me you didn’t just quote Monty Python while you’re doing your best to bleed out on me.”

“I’m invincible,” he said, his smile growing just a tiny bit broader.

“You’re a fucking lucky Irish bastard is what you are,” Kelly whispered, pressing harder on the blood-soaked t-shirt.

Nick grimaced, tension and pain obvious in every line of his body and crease on his face.

“Fucking hurry up!” Kelly shouted at the driver. The guy didn’t respond, but he heard the engine rev higher.

“He’ll be all right,” the guy who’d helped them into the car. “I’ve seen guys with worse.”

“You always were an optimist, Eli,” Nick mumbled before he finally lost consciousness.

“Nick? Nick!” The tears Kelly had been holding back streamed down his face. Holding the pressure on Nick’s wounds as hard as he dared, Kelly collapsed forward, sobbing into Nick’s shoulder. He could still feel Nick’s heart beating under his hands, but the pulse was erratic. Thready. Inconsistent. It was there, though. It was there and that was all that kept Kelly holding on.

Someone must have called ahead because when the SUV pulled into the ER drop-off, a team of nurses were waiting with a stretcher. Strangers in scrubs pushed Eli out of the way and put their hands on Nick, pulling him away from Kelly. It took every ounce of willpower Kelly had not to deck them and hold on to Nick just to keep him closer where he knew Nick would be safe. But he had to stand by the car and watch as they wheeled Nick through the doors and away.

“Sir!” A woman stood in front of Kelly, concern etched deep on her face. “Sir?”

Kelly’s vision began to go white and the ringing in his ears that had finally been fading away rushed back in like a siren. He wobbled slightly, losing his balance, and he caught sight of his own arm bathed bright red.

“Sir!” There was genuine fear in the nurse’s voice now and that made sense because Kelly was falling and he couldn’t seem to stop the descent.

Eli did it for him.

Kelly ended up in the guy’s arms as the world began to fade.

“You better fucking hang on, kid,” Eli murmured as he deposited Kelly on a stretcher that seemed to appear out of nowhere. “Nick’ll  _murder_  me if you die.”

I won’t, Kelly tried to say, but it was too late.

The world faded to black. 


	20. Chapter 20

Nick knew where he was before he opened his eyes. He remembered what happened at Novikov’s and he remembered Kelly’s explosive rescue, and he remembered being in the car on his way to the hospital. Nick knew that if he woke up at all, he’d be in a hospital bed.

That didn’t explain why the disappointment was so insanely intense when he opened his eyes and saw Ty instead of Kelly.

“You really are lucky, you moron.” Ty’s voice was thick, his eyes red-rimmed, and his mouth locked in a tight line. “Five minutes, Nick. If we’d been five minutes later you would’ve lost too much blood and they wouldn’t’ve…” Ty closed his eyes, his entire body drawn taut.

“Hey.” Nick’s voice was raspy, but the pain that shot through his arm when Nick moved his hand was duller than he expected it to be. Probably had something to do with whatever was being pumped into his system through the IV digging into his skin. “I’m good, Ty.”

His words were as slurred as his brain felt, but he thought Ty could still understand him.

Ty swallowed and leaned down until his forehead rested against Nick’s. “I’m sorry, man.”

The words swirled in his brain, stirring up dark currents that he couldn’t subdue. Ty had absolutely nothing to be sorry for. But Kelly wasn’t here. Nick remembered blood on Kelly’s arm—a _lot_ of blood. And now Kelly wasn’t here.

His eyes burned and his throat constricted, tightening so much that Nick could barely force words out. “Kelly?”

Ty huffed and pulled away, but the mingled annoyance and respect on his face didn’t match the expression Nick had feared seeing on his friend’s face.

“That bastard is the same kind of crazy as you, man.” He shook his head, a small smile playing across his lips.

“Where…?” He couldn’t get more than that one word out. He had to know for sure. He had to see for himself that Kelly had made it through that insane rescue mission alive. There had been so much blood running down the kid’s arm.

Ty turned slightly, glancing at the second bed in the room. It was a struggle for Nick to move that much when his skin felt too tight over his muscles and his head throbbed and his ribs protested, but he managed to push up to his elbows with Ty’s help and spotted Kelly sleeping just a few feet away.

“The bullet was just a graze but it went deep and it got real close to some major something in his arm. He almost bled out standing in front of the freaking ER.”

Even _looking_ at Kelly and _knowing_ that he was fine, all Nick heard was “bled out in front of the ER.” The beeping that had been just background noise until now picked up speed, keeping pace with Nick’s suddenly rapid pulse. He lurched forward, trying to roll over the sidebar and out of the bed. Ty was too fast. His hands caught Nick’s arms and he pushed Nick back into the bed, holding him there while Nick struggled to get free.

“I need—I have to—oh god, Ty!” The tears that had threatened earlier spilled out, streaking down his cheeks in rivers. Ty’s grip shifted, no longer holding him down. Now his friend’s arms wrapped around his shoulders as he pulled him into a hug, ignoring Nick’s numerous aches and pains in favor of emotional comfort. “Ty…”

“I know, idiot, but he’s okay, all right? The kid is fine.” Ty held Nick close and kept up a constant stream of comforting whispers until Nick managed to breathe normally. His eyes were wet and blurry but he couldn’t even muster the small amount of energy it would take to wipe them dry. Ty pulled a tissue out of the box by the bed and did it for him.

“You know,” Ty mused as he dabbed at Nick’s eyes, “I always expected that when you fell for someone this hard it’d be someone who was practically a newborn lamb, completely incapable of taking care of themselves.”

Nick blinked. “What?”

“C’mon. You can’t still be in denial about this savoir complex you’ve been rocking for our entire lives, can you?” Ty rolled his eyes, but he was smirking when he did. “I pictured you mooning over some helpless girl or guy who ended up relying on you for absolutely _everything_ and basically ruined your life.”

The breathless laugh that burst from Nick’s mouth sent pain ricocheting through his chest. He winced and laid back against the pillow. “I’m glad you have such high opinions of my taste, asshole.”

“I do now.” Ty glanced toward the other bed where Kelly was still fast asleep. “You could do a lot worse than that one, Irish. I don’t know if he’s game or not, but I guess if you had to lose your heart to the unattainable there’d be worse places for it to fall.”

Nick turned his head enough to stare across the small room at Kelly’s face. In sleep the stress and the anxiety and the fear that had been consistently etched into his expression since the day they’d met was gone. Kelly looked his age for once. He looked young and relaxed. He looked beautiful. All Nick wanted was to climb into that tiny bed next to him and hold him close to make certain that he was safe and real and _here_ , but Nick had no idea how Kelly might take it. He hadn’t batted an eyelash at Ty and Zane’s relationship, but not caring if other people were gay was _not_ the same as being okay with a guy you thought was your friend kissing you out of nowhere.

“What should I do?” Nick whispered, his eyes still on Kelly.

“You’re asking me? You remember how I handled things with Zane, right?” Ty raised his eyebrows. “You should already know that subtlety isn’t a card I have in my deck. I say go for it and see what happens. I mean, you both…” a little of the cockiness faded from his expression. “You both almost died today, Nick. Taking a chance that things will work out for the best isn’t a lot after that, right?”

“Until he freaks and knocks me out with that hook of his,” Nick mumbled.

“You really see Kelly doing something like that?” Ty shook his head. “I think that, even if he doesn’t swing both ways, he’s still not the type to go all macho-jock on you. I’d be shocked as hell—and blame you for doing something _way_ out of line—if you try this and lose him. That kid loves you. It may or may not be the kind of love that involves kissing, but he does love you.”

“He saved my life today.”

Ty glared. “Excuse me, I think I played a part in that rescue too, moron.” He sighed and shrugged, leaning against the railing of Nick’s bed. “But yes. He was ready to throw himself on the grenade to get you out of there.”

Nick swallowed hard and nodded, his eyes never leaving Kelly’s face. The terror he’d felt when Kelly walked into that warehouse was still living in his chest and Nick knew— _knew_ —that he’d regret it for the rest of his life if he didn’t take a chance with Kelly.

“You gonna be there to pick up the pieces if this goes to hell, Tyler?” Nick asked, finally meeting his friend’s eyes.

“Always, man.” Ty leaned over the bed and pressed a kiss to Nick’s forehead. “Always.” 


	21. Chapter 21

Kelly laid in his hospital bed, his eyes closed. He hadn’t dared move for the last couple of hours, not since Nick had woken up. At first he’d just been trying to give Ty and Nick some privacy by pretending to be asleep, but then he’d heard what they were talking about.

It had nearly ripped his heart out to stay in bed when Nick was crying, but by then he’d been in too deep and been listening for too long. He’d heard too much. He couldn’t bring himself to open his eyes. Not yet. That was a while ago, though. His only excuse now was cowardice.

Kelly had to figure out what he wanted to do before he faced Nick.

“When you fell for someone this hard,” Ty had said. Implying that Nick was already in love with someone. With  _Kelly_. And Nick hadn’t even pretended to deny it.

The flutters that had sprung up in his stomach as the conversation went on were as warm as they were unsettling. Kelly should have been freaking out—a  _guy_  had just professed love for him. He had no issue with gay guys—who people slept with was honestly none of his business—but Kelly had never  _ever_  been attracted to guys before. All of his crushes had been girls. But Nick…

Nick seemed to exist in a category all his own because when Kelly thought about Nick he felt safer and warmer and just  _more_  than he ever had with anyone else. Until he’d eavesdropped on a conversation Kelly knew he was  _not_  supposed to have heard, he never would have labelled that feeling as “love.” At least, not  _that_  kind of love. Because if he was gay—or even bi—Kelly would have been attracted to  _some_  other guy, right? Maybe not. Or maybe his taste in guys was really fucking particular. As in, only-Nick-particular.

The weirdest thing about all of this was that Kelly wasn’t freaked out by the attraction suddenly coiling through his body, but he was terrified of what might happen if he took the first step toward Nick. What if he broached the subject and it didn’t take? Like, what if this feeling wasn’t really attraction at all but friendship—a deeper, more intense friendship than he’d ever had with someone? The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Nick in any way. Nick had already been through so much hell because of Kelly. Kissing him and then taking it back would be like throwing boiling salt water on his open wounds.

But, god. If it worked, if Kelly really was attracted to him, the payoff of taking this leap could be so fucking worth it.

He rolled out of bed, glad Ty and Mara had brought clothing for him. He felt better moving to sit next to Nick’s bed in jeans and a t-shirt instead of a hospital gown. Nick, however, was still wearing a gown. Bandages covered his arms and peeked out of the neckline of the flimsy gown and Kelly closed his eyes, trying so hard not to picture what the wounds underneath those bandages looked like. Nick would have some scars, maybe a lot of scars. So many of the gashes had needed stitches. Kelly guessed that maybe it was lucky for Nick that the blade-wielder had known exactly what he was doing and had gone for pain instead of maiming or death. Yes Nick would have scars, but at least he’d be alive to get them.

Kelly settled into the chair by Nick’s bedside, pulling his feet up onto the seat and resting his chin on his knees. For a few minutes, he just sat there and watched Nick sleep. It was late and the hospital floor was almost silent. There were lights on in the hallway and a small lamp on in their room, but otherwise Nick and Kelly were wrapped in darkness and quiet. Because of the blood loss and the passing out, they’d insisted on keeping Kelly overnight after his transfusion. Nick would be here a few more days as they monitored him for possible internal injuries. Kelly was sorely tempted to pretend health problems just so they’d let him stay too. 

Nick stirred and shifted on the bed and Kelly moved, dropping his feet to the ground and leaning over the edge of Nick’s bed.

“Hey.” Nick smiled when his eyes opened and landed on Kelly. “You’re up.”

“ _You’re_  up,” Kelly said, giving Nick a small, nervous smile back. “I’ve been awake for a while now.”

“Hmm.” He shifted more, wincing when he turned his head to look at the clock on the nightstand. “It’s late. You okay?”

The question almost made Kelly laugh. “Yeah, Nicko, I’m fine. You’re the one we’re all worried about, remember?”

Nick frowned slightly, creases appearing around his eyes like he was thinking. “Ty said you passed out in front of the hospital.”

“Yeah.” Kelly shrugged, brushing the whole experience off. “Nothing a little borrowed blood and some stitches couldn’t fix.”

The laugh Kelly hoped for didn’t come. Instead, Nick frowned, his eyes glittering with regret and grief. “I’m so sorry, Kels.”

Kelly tilted his head, staring at Nick. He couldn’t be serious—I mean, come on; no way could Nick be seriously apologizing right now—but it really seemed like he was serious. “For  _what_? Saving me from my own stupid choices? Finding me and  _three_ other foster kids a safe place to stay? Literally risking your  _life_  to keep us out of the hands of the Russian mob? Please tell me exactly what you think you’re sorry for.”

“I…” Nick swallowed, looking so desperately confused. “You got hurt.”

“Yeah, well, that happens when you stand in the way of a bullet.” Kelly shrugged, the pain in his arm only a minor annoyance with the drugs that were still running through his system. Other than that, bruises down his side from where a piece of debris had hit him were Kelly’s only injuries. “Would you rather I left you where I found you?”

Nick moved his head, shaking it a little, his eyes wide. “I just…I didn’t want you to get hurt.”

Smiling a little more, Kelly dropped the railing on the bed and leaned closer, resting his head just above Nick’s hip on an area he was somewhat certain wasn’t injured. “You really do have a complex, don’t you?”

Sighing, Nick sunk a little deeper into his pillow. “I guess.”

“You guess?” Kelly teased. Nick rolled his eyes, but didn’t say anything else, seemingly content to let the conversation slide. Kelly rubbed his cheek gently across the side of Nick’s stomach, feeling his defined muscles underneath the thin hospital sheets and the thinner gown. “Thank you, by the way.”

“For what?”

“Everything, Nick. Especially today. That was…above and beyond really doesn’t cover it, babe.”

“May have only made it worse,” he muttered, the tension creeping back into his expression. “Novikov won’t be happy with either of us after today. He…Kelly, we may have to get you out of Boston—hell, off the entire east coast.”

Kelly saw how worried Nick was getting about this and reached out to smooth a hand over his curls. “Breathe, Nicko. We’re good. We’re both fine.”

Nick shook his head. “You don’t get it. This guy is ruthless. He won’t stop until we’re dead, especially after the shit both of us pulled today.”

“He won’t be doing anything after the shit we pulled today, Nick. Novikov died at the warehouse.”

“What?” Nick tried to sit up and Kelly pushed him back down, standing to make sure Nick didn’t try it again. “ _Seriously_?”

“Seriously.” Kelly kept a hand on Nick’s chest since the pressure didn’t seem to hurt him. He tried not to think about the skin separated from his by a single, super-starched layer of fabric.

“Why the hell didn’t Ty tell me  _that_?!”

 _Probably because you guys were too busy talking about your love life instead_ , Kelly thought. “Maybe he hadn’t heard yet. I heard Eli and Ty talking about it a little while ago.” One hand stayed on Nick’s chest, but the other somehow found its way to the curls above Nick’s right ear. “They ran the prints on the gun today. Apparently they belonged to Novikov’s son. With him going to prison and most of his father’s favorite lieutenants dead in the crossfire, the organization is in chaos. I don’t think they’ll have the time or energy for revenge hits anytime soon.”

“Oh.” Nick settled under Kelly’s hand, some of the tension leaking out of his muscles. “How much trouble are we all in for this shit?”

“Not much, actually.” Luckily, Ty and Eli had talked about that, too. “Special circumstances or something. Your Sidewinder friends have connections on the police force and I think they called in a few favors. And since the owners of the warehouse can’t press charges for damages from beyond the grave, I think we’re pretty much in the clear.”

“That’s…” Nick glanced up at Kelly’s hand on his head and he swallowed hard, seeming to force his eyes back to Kelly’s. “That’s good.”

“I figure Paddy will be pretty happy, too,” Kelly said, his smile turning a little forced. Somehow he didn’t like thinking about Nick going back to that world, going back to live under a mobster’s thumb. He hadn’t liked it before but now that he’d seen what that kind of guy was capable of, he wanted to keep Nick miles and miles away from any of that shit. “You just helped take out most of his competition.”

Nick grimaced and turned his face away.

“Hey. Nick? What’s wrong?” Kelly frowned and shifted his hand to Nick’s cheek, guiding him back the other way. “What is it?”

“It’s nothing.” He met Kelly’s eyes and almost managed a smile.

“One of these days you’re not going to bother lying to me when I ask you if you’re okay.” Kelly kept his voice neutral, but inside his heart ached. He trusted Nick with everything. Nick said that he loved Kelly, but he couldn’t even tell him the truth when he asked Nick a question?

Kelly watched Nick’s face shift and change, so many expressions flashing across his face that Kelly couldn’t even begin to read them. After a few seconds Nick closed his eyes and exhaled and long, heavy breath. When he opened them again, Kelly saw fear and confusion lingering in Nick’s bright green eyes.

“I don’t think I want to go back,” Nick finally whispered, like if he said it too loud Paddy might somehow hear. “I don’t want to do it anymore, Kels.”

Kelly smiled, the expression much more genuine this time. “Then don’t. I think Paddy owes you a pretty big favor for this. If you want out, get out now.”

“It’s not that easy.” Nick swallowed, his throat contracting convulsively and his head swinging slightly in adamant denial. “This isn’t a life you can just walk away from. It doesn’t let you go. It clings like a parasite.”

Stroking Nick’s hair, Kelly searched for some way to contradict him, some comfort he could offer. But he didn’t know enough about the world Nick lived in. He had no idea what to say.

Nick smiled a little like he could hear Kelly’s mind frantically spinning. “It’s fine, Kels. There’s nothing either of us can do about it. Almost dying always makes me jittery.”

It was supposed to be a joke, Kelly knew that, but with Nick still in a hospital bed he really couldn’t find it funny. “You’ve almost died  _before_? What, like this is a habit with you?”

“Shit happens.” Nick closed his eyes and he looked like he tried to shrug but aborted the motion fast.

“Yeah? Well, maybe we should try to break that habit, huh? That sounds like an  _excellent_  idea to me.”

Opening his eyes, Nick smiled ruefully up at Kelly. “I don’t know if that’s ever gonna happen, Kels.”

His chest tightened more. “What? Why not?”

“Wanna know the only other jobs I ever thought I might want?”

Kelly sighed pulling one of his hands back and propping his elbow on the edge of the mattress so he could rest his chin in his hand. “I’m gonna hate this, aren’t I?”

“Maybe,” Nick said with a slight laugh. “I always thought I’d either become a cop or join the marines.”

“Got a thing for guns, huh?” Neither of those professions were anything close to safe, but they weren’t the same kind of dirty or dangerous a life as Paddy’s minion would be. And, in a strange way, they both made perfect sense for a guy like Nick. “I’ve actually thought about the Navy after high school,” Kelly admitted.

“Yeah?” Nick’s smile grew a bit wider.

“Yeah. College and med school are fucking expensive, you know? My parents left me a little bit of money, but not enough to afford that. Navy, though? They’ll pay for everything to train you as a medic.”

“A medic?” Nick nodded, his smile growing soft and sweet. “You wanna be a doc, Kels? I can see that. It’d be a good fit.”

Looking at Nick’s smile now, Kelly had the urge to lean forward and kiss him. He bit his lip and held himself back, but only barely. The butterflies in his chest turned into a tornado. Was he really going to cross this line? There was no going back from this. Even if he didn’t like it and they never went any further, Kelly would never be able to look at Nick without seeing this moment. It would be this indelible thing that always hovered between them no matter how hard they pretended it didn’t exist.

Somehow it didn’t matter. Even just the last few minutes talking to Nick made Kelly absolutely certain that he would regret not jumping off this cliff way more than he could ever regret jumping.

Clearing his throat, he sat up and shifted his chair, scooting closer to the head of the bed and Nick’s very kissable lips. “Hey, Irish?”

Nick looked up at him, that same soft smile playing across his lips. “Yeah, Doc?”

“Will you kiss me?”

The absolute shock on Nick’s face was almost funny. It  _would_  have been funny if Kelly hadn’t been so fucking terrified about the answer.

“What?” Nick rasped.

“C’mon, Nicko.” Kelly tried to smile but he wasn’t sure that it worked. “It’s not that complicated a question. Will you kiss me?”

Nick glanced around the room like he was looking for some sign this was a dream or a prank or something. Kelly could see his lips moving, but he couldn’t hear anything that he said. Whatever it was wasn’t meant for Kelly’s ears. After a few more seconds, Nick’s eyes narrowed and he met Kelly’s gaze again.

“Before, you…you said I had a complex.”

Kelly nodded slowly. “You do.”

“But you said that, specifically. A complex.” He swallowed. “You…you heard what Ty said earlier, didn’t you?”

It wasn’t in Kelly to lie. Not to Nick. “Yeah, I heard you.”

Nick closed his eyes, looking like he wished the bed would open up and swallow him. “You don’t have to do this.”

“You’re not seriously thinking I’d  _ask_  you to kiss me out of… what? Pity? Gratitude?” Kelly kept his voice low and his eyes locked on Nicks, leaning closer and closer until less than six inches separated them. He hadn’t thought he’d have to talk Nick into this, but he kind of liked having to talk Nick into this. He liked that the gesture meant so much to Nick that it wasn’t something he would take lightly or take advantage of. He liked _Nick_. He  _loved_  Nick.“Nicholas O’Flaherty, do you  _really_  think I would ask you to kiss me if I didn’t  _want_  you to kiss me?”

Nick swallowed so hard it was audible and his gaze flicked down to Kelly’s lips. “Have you…have you ever…?”

“Kissed a guy?” Kelly shook his head and then shrugged. “Haven’t kissed too many girls either, though.”

Kelly still had one hand on Nick’s chest and he could feel his pulse pick up in time with the beeping machines next to his bed. Nick opened his mouth and closed it again. “Why?”

“Why do I want to kiss you?”

Nick nodded and Kelly considered the best way to phrase his answer.

“Because you saved me when most people would have completely written me off. Because you get the shit my life has been the last few years. Because you’re a good guy in a world filled with pretty fucking awful people. Because you’re brave and honest and smart.” Kelly smiled and brushed his fingers through Nick’s hair again. “Because I have a thing for redheads.”

For a few seconds, Nick didn’t blink or move or even breathe. Kelly shifted in his seat, nerves building and fizzing until Kelly knew he had to move or risk combusting completely. Biting his lip, he pulled back slightly, his fingers drawing away from Nick’s hair.

Maybe he’d misunderstood what he’d overheard. Maybe he’d moved too fast. Maybe when faced with the reality of kissing Kelly, Nick didn’t find the possibility so appealing anymore. Maybe he—

Nick moved in a sudden burst, one hand pushing him off the bed, the other wrapping around the back of Kelly’s neck and pulling him down until their lips met and Kelly’s breath rushed out of him like he’d been hit. For a second he was too stunned to respond, but then the details of the moment began to register in his brain. The heat from Nick’s hand holding him exactly where he wanted him. The firm press of Nick’s lips against his. The muscles under Kelly’s palm rippling as Nick fought to hold himself up.

Kelly was flooded by new information and unforeseen reactions. He moaned and pressed Nick onto the bed, one hand clutching Nick’s stupid hospital gown and the other digging into Nick’s hair. Heat burned up Kelly’s body from the inside out, consuming him and burning him to ash and rebuilding him completely. He wanted to live in this moment forever, dive under Nick’s skin and stay there. Never in his life had Kelly felt more sheltered or more free than when Nick was doing his best to eat him alive.

Only a desperate need to breathe managed to drag Kelly away from Nick’s lips.

When Kelly opened his eyes and looked down at Nick, he seemed as stunned as Kelly felt. He swallowed and licked his lips. Kelly couldn’t help watching the path of Nick’s tongue, battling the temptation to trace that path with his own. When Kelly caught Nick’s eyes again, he could see amusement dancing there.

“So what now?” Nick asked, his voice carrying the hint of a growl that sent shivers across Kelly’s skin.

Kelly reached out, his fingers absently tracing patterns on the bits of Nick’s arm not covered in bandages. “Now, you try not to die, we try to get you away from Paddy, and we see where the rest of it takes us. Detailed plans never worked out too well for me.”

“Kels,” Nick sighed, taking Kelly’s hand in his. “Paddy’s not gonna let me go. And that’s okay.” He shrugged and forced a smile. “I’m kinda good at it, you know. Plus, I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“What about the marines?”

Nick huffed and patted Kelly’s hand. “Babe, you really think the military would be safer than working for Paddy?”

“Maybe. It’d be a damn sight cleaner, anyway.”

“Maybe,” Nick repeated. “But you’re an optimist.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Kelly leaned over and rested his head on that one safe patch of Nick’s stomach.

“It’s definitely not a bad thing. That optimism is one of the reasons I…” His eyes widened and his mouth snapped shut.

Kelly lifted his head, watching Nick intently. He knew what words Nick had cut off, he’d heard him tell Ty, but suddenly Kelly needed to hear Nick say it. Kelly needed Nick to say it to  _him_  instead of someone else.

“One of the reasons you what, Nick?”

His eyes closed for a second and Kelly could almost hear Nick calling himself a thousand different kinds of idiot for letting that slip. Kelly held his breath, almost expecting Nick to try to retract the entire statement, but he didn’t. With only the most minor grumbling, Nick relented.

“It’s one of the reasons I love you.”

Grinning, Kelly leaned in and kissed Nick again, dragging the tip of his tongue along Nick’s lower lip and loving the way Nick shuddered under him. “I love you too,” Kelly whispered against Nick’s lips. “Just in case you hadn’t figured that out yet.”

Nick went nearly boneless underneath Kelly and he lifted his head until their foreheads touched. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Kels.”

“Ditto, Nicko.”

He relaxed back onto the pillow, but Nick’s fingers stayed locked in Kelly’s shaggy blond hair. “And don’t worry about Paddy, okay? I’ll be fine. Working for him isn’t so bad, actually. It’s just been a rough day.”

“But, Nick, you—”

Nick tightened his grip on Kelly and shook him gently, his expression serious. “Kelly, no. I know what I said and I didn’t mean it, okay? Paddy’s helped me out a lot. He’s not that bad. Nothing like Novikov.” Sadness seeped into his eyes, sadness that Nick wiped away almost as soon as Kelly spotted it. “I’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.”

Knowing there wasn’t anything else he could do then, not without stressing Nick out when he should have been resting, Kelly nodded. “All right.”

Although Nick looked slightly skeptical at Kelly’s easy agreement, exhaustion was starting to creep in. Nick gave in, pulling Kelly down for one more kiss before releasing his grip and falling back onto the pillow.

“You’re gonna be here when I wake up, right?” Nick asked.

“Are you kidding?” Kelly smirked and pressed a kiss to Nick’s cheek. “Just try getting rid of me.”

Nick finally relaxed and slowly fell back to sleep. Kelly didn’t move from the seat by his bed for another hour, his mind turning over possibilities and problems. Despite how Nick had tried to play it off, Kelly had seen the absolute desperation in his eyes when he’d said he wanted out. That wasn’t a lie or a mistake or some unimportant kink in Nick’s life.

Nick wanted out.

All Kelly had to do was figure out how to make that happen. 


	22. Chapter 22

Kelly stood in the doorway of the kitchen, looking out into the main room of the restaurant and fighting the urge to run. There was nothing scary about this place, an upscale Italian eatery with marble floors, dark wood accents, and colorful art on the walls. There was nothing  _obviously_ scary, but Kelly knew it was just a façade. Behind this innocuous décor was a man who held Nick’s entire life in the palm of his hand. Someone with the power to destroy Nick completely or help Kelly save him and that? That right there was fucking terrifying.

The place was closed to patrons, but Kelly had snuck in the service entrance where the kitchen staff was still in the process of stripping the place and scrubbing it clean. There was so much movement and noise that slipping past them all was simple. Way simpler than it should have been considering who owned the place. Maybe the recent death of Paddy’s number one enemy/competition made security think they could take a night off.

Or maybe Paddy wasn’t actually here tonight.

Kelly really hoped it wasn’t that. He didn’t have the time to go running all over town trying to track this guy down.  

Taking a deep breath, Kelly walked toward one of the only people still working in the main dining room. The bartender stood behind the bar, a row of wine glasses laid out in front of him. He picked one up and swiped a drying rag over the surface, holding the glass up to the light and rubbing out the water spots he found there.

The guy glanced up when he heard Kelly approaching, confusion obvious on his face. “Did we lock you in or something? Sorry, kid. We’re closed.” He put the wine glass in the rack hanging from the ceiling and picked up the next one. “I can call you a cab or something if you need it.”

“I don’t need a cab. Can you tell Paddy that a friend of Nick O’Flaherty is here to see him?”

The bartender froze mid-swipe, his attention completely focused on Kelly. “Does this friend have a name?”

Kelly considered not telling him, but then he glanced up, spotting the security cameras everywhere. It’d take about five minutes for Paddy to figure out who he was once he started looking. “Kelly Abbott.”

“Is Nicky okay?” A strange amount of fear mixed with the concern Kelly could see in his eyes.

“He will be.”

The bartender swallowed and nodded, wiping the glass in his hands one more time before hanging it upside down in the rack over his head. “I don’t think he’s gone yet. I’ll check but…I’m telling you, kid. If you got bad news to pass on about Nicky, you might want to leave a note or something. Paddy loves that guy.”

Kelly was kind of counting on that, so hearing it helped. “I need to talk to him.”

Shrugging, the guy nodded toward the stools lining the bar. “Sit down. I’ll come get you if he’s willing to see you.”

The guy trotted down the stairs to the right of the bar as Kelly paced. There was too much energy sparking through his veins for Kelly to stay still. This could go incredibly wrong or it could solve everything.

Kelly was only left stewing for a couple of minutes before the bartender reappeared. The anxiety on his face didn’t do a damn thing to calm Kelly down.

“You sure about this?” the guy asked one more time.

“Yes.”

Sighing, the guy nodded toward the stairs. “C’mon, then.”

The lower levels of the building were as finely finished as the main floor with carved wood moldings and gilt-framed artwork. It didn’t look at all seedy the way Kelly had kind of expected it to. It seemed like whatever Paddy did, he did it with a certain degree of style and flair. Kelly honestly had no idea if that boded well or ill for his mission here tonight.

Two massive guys in slick suits stood outside a solid wood door at the end of a long hall. They both eyes Kelly with a healthy dose of skepticism and disdain—Kelly’s jeans and fleece-lined jacket weren’t exactly impressive—but they didn’t try to stop him when the bartender indicated the door.

“Good luck, kid,” the guy murmured under his breath before he turned and walked back the way they’d come.

One of the guards knocked on the door twice and then waited until a gruff voice called out permission before swinging it open and pushing Kelly inside. Although he stumbled slightly, Kelly kept his feet and strode into the room, his hands in clear sight by his sides.

Behind the large desk at the other side of the office sat a man with graying auburn hair and a round face. His suit looked tailor-made, but it was rumpled like he’d been wearing it for a couple of days straight. Sitting in front of him was a half-full bottle of high-end whiskey and a crystal tumbler with a fingers-width amount of the amber liquid inside. Paddy sat there swirling the liquid inside the tumbler, but his attention was on Kelly.

“Is Nicky still alive?” Paddy asked before Kelly could say a thing.

Kelly was a little surprised by how much the answer to that question seemed to matter to Paddy. “Yes. He’ll be fine. He’ll have scars for the rest of his life, but he’ll live.”

Paddy closed his eyes, bringing the glass to press against his forehead. Kelly could see his lips moving, but the words were too quiet, obviously not meant for anyone but Paddy. And maybe God. He downed the rest of the whiskey in one swallow and set the glass done with a solid thunk.

“What was Nicky doing that set him in that bastard’s crosshairs?”

“Being Nick.” Kelly stopped in front of his desk and stood as still as possible. “He ran ballistics on bullets that matched the murder of a politician who wouldn’t play nice with Novikov’s family. They found out and came after us both.”

Eyes narrowing, Paddy folded his hands and placed them on the desk. “Are you the one who Nicky asked me to pretend doesn’t exist?”

“Yes.”

He took a deep breath, ice and steel creeping into his stare. “Explain. From the beginning.”

Kelly only hesitated for a moment before he took a breath and told the story. All of it. He told Paddy about the foster house he and the kids ran from, finding the gun, his decision to rob the corner store, and everything that happened after that. He told Paddy about how Nick helped him find a place to stay and his worries about the gun Kelly had found.

“I didn’t want to give it to him, but he had the bullets I put into the wall the night we met,” Kelly said. “He ran ballistics on those and came to me with the results. He, uh…” Kelly rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, giving in to the urge to move. “He traded me a clean gun for the dirty one.”

Paddy nodded. “I heard he was asking around for a gun. He needed a Glock 20 particularly.”

Kelly smiled slightly at the memory of that conversation. “He wanted to give me something he knew I could use.”

“Nicky’s always been a considerate boy.” A little bit of the ice melted out of Paddy’s eyes. “So this explains the attention. How did my boy end up in Novikov’s claws?”

“The problems started when whoever Novikov bought off at the police department told him that someone had the gun,” Kelly said, all traces of a smile gone. “They ransacked Sidewinder’s offices and figured out where the kids and I were staying. They came after us. Nick warned us and we got up to the house but…but Novikov’s men grabbed him before he got there.”

Paddy’s linked hands tightened on the desk until his knuckles turned white. “This much I heard from Mikey when he returned. He knew Nicky was missing and he knew you and two others who’d been at the house disappeared suddenly. What neither of us have been able to puzzle out is exactly how the situation resolved itself.”

So Kelly explained. He told Paddy everything, including every gory detail of exactly how bad it was when Kelly finally found Nick. Paddy closed his eyes then, his entire body tense, but he didn’t interrupt Kelly’s story. Kelly kept talking, explaining how Ty, Zane, and Sidewinder broke into the building and helped him extract Nick and get him to the hospital in time.

“He’ll be there for a few days at least so they can watch for internal injuries, but everyone seems optimistic. They’re pretty sure he’ll make a full recovery.” A recover Kelly would do anything he could to ensure.

“That’s good to hear.” Paddy’s hands relaxed slightly. He sat back in his chair and stared at the wall just left of Kelly for a minute, silent and lost in his own thoughts. Finally, he blinked and seemed to come back to himself. “It seems I owe you a debt, lad.”

“You owe both of us. Nick basically cleaned up most of your competition this afternoon.”

Paddy nodded, but didn’t seem concerned about that. “He knows he’ll be rewarded.”

“I already know what he wants. What I want, too,” Kelly said. “Release Nick.”

Eyebrows rising, Paddy leaned forward. “From  _what_ , lad?”

“You. Your organization. Whatever it is that he does for you. All of it.” Lightning started to build behind Paddy’s eyes and Kelly knew he had to explain better, had to make him see why this was so important. It was _obvious_  how much Paddy cared about Nick. He’d let him go if Kelly could convince him that it was for the best. That much Kelly was sure of. “He won’t ask because he doesn’t want to disappoint you, but what happened today changed him. He can’t go back to it. He can’t. All I’m asking is that you don’t make him.” 

Paddy’s control finally cracked. He lifted one hand, rubbing his lips. The gesture was almost exactly the same as the one that Nick made when he was nervous or upset. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to do.”

“Yes, I think I do.” Kelly stepped a little closer to the desk. “It’s obvious that you care about him. If you do, you have to do this for him.”

There was a beat of silence before Paddy sighed. “Does he know what he wants to do instead? I cannot condone letting him go without some sort of plan.”  Paddy shook his head. “I won’t send him back to where he came from.”

Kelly’s jaw clenched and he shook his head once. “I wouldn’t want you to.”

Paddy met Kelly’s eyes and tilted his head in silent acknowledgement of Kelly’s point.

“Nick told me earlier that he always thought he might want to either join the marines or become a cop.”

The grin that split Paddy’s face was as bright as it was unexpected. “Golden that boy’s heart always was. Absolutely golden.” The grin faded into a rueful smile. “The cops won’t take him, though. Not in this town. He has too many ties to my family that won’t disappear even if I do what you ask.”

“There are other towns.” Kelly said it, but just the words made his stomach flip. There  _were_  other towns, but they would take Nick away from him. The thought was hard to even contemplate. Kelly had  _just_  found him.

“Same problem, lad.” Paddy frowned, thinking. “If Nicky is serious about this—and you understand that I’m going to need to hear this from him before I agree to anything.”

It was a statement, not a question, but Kelly nodded anyway.

“Good. Then,  _if_  Nicky is serious about this, then the marines might be his only choice.”

Suddenly “other towns” sounded a whole lot better. Marines meant deployments and training missions and war zones and bombs. The marines were a hell of a lot more dangerous than the police department and the distances would take Nick a hell of a lot farther away from Kelly.

But it would get him free of Paddy.

His throat closed, words weren’t possible. Kelly simply nodded.  

“I suppose we’ll see, yes?” Paddy sighed, suddenly seeming years older and absolutely exhausted. “Once Nicky is feeling better, I suppose we’ll see.”

It took two hard swallows and to clear his throat before   Kelly could speak. “Thank you, sir.”

Paddy stood up and walked around the desk, his hand held out. Kelly took it tentatively, shocked when Paddy pulled him into a hug.

“I’m glad Nicky was right about you, lad,” Paddy said. “It would have disappointed me greatly to have to kill you for hurting that boy.”

Paddy released him and Kelly took a step back, shaking his head. “I would never, sir.”

“I see that.” Paddy patted his cheek and then dropped his hands to Kelly’s shoulders. “Nicky inspires loyalty like few others I’ve seen, but it’s different with you, I think.”

Kelly tensed. As far as he knew, the criminal underworld was surprisingly right-wing about a lot of shit, especially homosexuality.  

Paddy just smiled and squeezed Kelly’s shoulders. “You take good care of him or I will hurt you in ways you cannot even imagine, lad.”

“You don’t have to worry about me,” Kelly told him.

Head tilting slightly, Paddy smiled down at Kelly. “You know, I almost believe that.” With one more squeeze of his shoulders, Paddy released him. “Send Nicky my love, will you? Tell him I’ll be visiting when he gets home.”

“I will.”

Paddy turned his back on Kelly, the dismissal obvious in the gesture, and Kelly left while he could. Not looking right or left, Kelly walked up the stairs and out of the restaurant, not even  _breathing_  until he stood on the sidewalk under the cloudy winter sky.

He’d done it. He’d done it and he’d made it out of Paddy’s lair alive and—so far—with his plans intact.

Kelly just hoped that Nick would see all this as a good thing. 


	23. Chapter 23

Nick leaned heavily on Kelly, tired just from the walk up the stairs to his third floor apartment. He probably should have stayed in the hospital another day or so, but the stillness and the  _complete_  lack of privacy was beginning to drive Nick insane. He had to get out even if the only place he had to go was his nearly empty studio apartment.

“You sure you’re doin’ all right?” Kelly asked when Nick stopped halfway down the hall. His hands absently rubbed Nick’s sides, where there was the least amount of bandages, but he studied Nick’s face intently. “Maybe you should’ve stayed in the hospital, babe.”

“Probably,” Nick admitted. “But no way am I going back.”

Kelly smiled gently. “Yeah, I figured. C’mon, let’s get you in bed before you collapse on me again.”

“Ugh. Moving sucks.” Nick grumbled and pushed off the railing. Kelly’s arm slid around his waist, the warmth and the solidity of his hold comforting in so many ways. He’d never thought he’d get up the nerves to even  _admit_  his feelings to Kelly let alone find out Kelly felt the exact same way. Part of his mind kept throwing up red flags and sounding alarms, warning him that this was too good to be true. The rest of his brain told that part to sit down and shut the fuck up. Nothing about this had been easy. He and Kelly had worked and suffered for every single bit of what they’d found. Fuck everything and everyone who told him it wouldn’t last. Even if that everyone included himself.

Kelly soothed and encouraged and prodded Nick down the hallway until they reached the door. Of course, Kelly swiped Nick’s keys before Nick could do more than mutter a protest.

All Kelly did was roll his eyes. “Shut up, you big baby.”

“Your bedside manner needs some work, Doc,” Nick griped as Kelly unlocked the door.

“Yeah, well, if I’m gonna be treating sailors and marines, it won’t matter much, will it?” Kelly winked and pushed the door open, jumping backward a foot when he looked inside. “Holy sit you scared me.”

Nick tensed. Shit. Someone was in his apartment? The only other people who had keys were Mikey and Ty. Gathering strength, Nick managed to peek into the room just as a familiar voice floated out of it.

“You’re letting the heat out, boys,” Paddy said. “Come in and shut the door.”

Nick was frozen, shock taking away what little energy he’d had left. Kelly didn’t have that problem. He tugged Nick into the house and firmly closed the door behind them.

Paddy stood up from the slightly beat-up leather sofa Nick had picked up used, buttoning his suit jacket as he stepped around the even more beat-up coffee table.

“Kelly,” Paddy said, nodding a greeting to a guy he should  _not_  have been able to identify. There was nothing in Nick’s apartment that linked to Kelly at all—Nick had been extremely careful about that to keep Kelly safe. That could only mean…

“Sir,” Kelly responded with a healthy dose of wary respect.

…Fuck. They’d met. Somehow Kelly and Paddy had already met.

“When you said you’d come visit when he came home, I thought you meant after he had a chance to get settled.” The respect was still in Kelly’s tone, but there was something else there too, something almost like admonishment.

“Yes, but then my boy went and checked himself out against the doctors’ orders and I needed to see for myself that he was all right.” Paddy stopped in front of Nick and gently rested his hands on Nick’s cheeks. “You gave me quite a scare, Nicky.”

Nick swallowed, guilt eating away at his stomach. “Sorry, sir.”

“I know, boyo, I know.” He patted Nick’s cheek, his touch still surprisingly gentle, before he pulled back a foot. “And from the looks I’m getting off both of you, I’m guessing your, eh, your  _friend_  didn’t tell you about the chat we had a couple of days ago.”

“No.” Nick cast a glare at Kelly who was looking both innocent and entirely unapologetic. “He must not have gotten around to it.” Despite the _hours_  of boredom Kelly had suffered with Nick since the kid had refused to leave the hospital even after he’d been released.

“He was recovering. I was going to tell him once I got him here and resting again,” Kelly explained, entirely calm. “I didn’t think you’d be here first.”

“Plans change.” Paddy stared at Kelly, some silent struggle happening between them. It didn’t last long. When Paddy’s gaze shifted to the door, Kelly’s shoulders slumped.

“I’ll…I’ll go get you some groceries or something.”

Before Nick could think of a way to keep Kelly here, the kid had pressed a kiss to Nick’s cheek, palmed Nick’s keys, and was out the door with a solid, determined stride. He didn’t look back once.

“I think you picked well with that one, Nicky.” Paddy nodded slowly, his eyes still on the door Kelly had closed behind himself.

“Thank you.” Nick hoped he’d still agree with that assessment once Paddy explained why he was here. A simple check in would not have required Paddy’s presence. Especially not Paddy’s conspicuously  _solo_  presence. This visit was serious and it was private and Nick wanted to drag Kelly back in here by the hair to explain. Or even just to force him to face this mess with him.

“Don’t look so nervous, Nicky.” Paddy smiled, but it was a strangely sad smile, one Nick had never seen before. “Sit down before you fall over.”

Knowing he wasn’t wrong about the possibility of collapse, Nick shuffled toward the couch. Sitting wasn’t exactly easy with the way his skin pulled at the stitches all over his body and the pain in his ribs. Luckily, Paddy caught Nick’s elbow and balanced him as Nick lowered himself to the faintly cracked cushions.

“Need anything, Nicky?”

The question seemed genuine and without limits, as if Nick could ask for a million dollars, a Pulitzer, a unicorn, and his own space station and Paddy would find a way to make it happen. Nick still shook his head. He kind of wanted a glass of water, but what he wanted more than anything else right now was for this conversation to start so it could be over.

“What did he tell you?”

“We had a little story-time, your boy and me,” Paddy admitted as he sat on the other end of the couch. “I always knew you were a good-hearted soul, but what you’ve done for Kelly and his family is more than almost everyone on the planet would have done. Except maybe the Blessed Mother Teresa.”

“I told you before.” Nick shrugged and fought the urge to fidget under Paddy’s steady gaze. “He reminded me of me.”

Paddy smiled. “You did say that. I think that may not have been the entire truth, but it’s true enough. I can see a lot of you in that boy, too.”

“But that’s not why you’re here,” Nick guessed.

“Not all of it.” The sadness was back in his eyes, along with a healthy dose of annoyance. “This shouldn’t have happened to you, Nicholas. Why didn’t you ask me for help?”

“It wasn’t your fight, sir. And I didn’t…I didn’t know it would get this bad.”

“I should hope not. Heading into something like this knowingly would be stupidly suicidal, Nicky.” The frustration and fear was obvious in his voice. “And you wouldn’t do something like that, would you? No matter how badly you wanted out of this life.”

Nick closed his eyes as all the pieces started to fit into place.  _That_  was what Kelly had told him. He’d brought Nick’s drug-induced honesty to Paddy and then…shit. Nick had no idea where this conversation would go now. “I wouldn’t do that, Paddy.”

“That’s good. I’m glad.” Paddy was silent for a long, drawn-out moment, long enough that Nick had to open his eyes to get a read on the situation. Paddy was tense, but the simmering, fear-fueled anger that had been building in his eyes was gone. “Is it true what he said? Are you done?”

He should deny it, Nick knew that, but when he opened his mouth he couldn’t form the words. Could he really go back to a life of back alleys and cash drops and gun running and mystery errands and coded messages and the constant threat of death or jail? Could he do that and expect Kelly to stay away from the grime of it all? All he had to remember was the look on the kid’s face when he walked into that warehouse. No way would Kelly sit on the sidelines if he thought Nick was in trouble. Nick wasn’t naïve enough to even pretend to believe that.

But what was the other option? Bring Kelly into the shadows with him? Worse, could he face the life at all anymore? He’d done it for Paddy, because of the protection Paddy offered his sisters from their asshole of a father, but could he really pay for that protection for the rest of his life? Could he pay for it  _with_  his life?

“I owe you too much to walk away,” Nick finally said. It was the truth and a side step away from the real answer.

Paddy sighed, his head hanging a little low. “Don’t you think you’ve paid enough, Nicky?” He looked up, steadily meeting Nick’s eyes. “And do you really believe that I would let that bastard who calls himself your father hurt those girls? Even if you walked away?”

“No, I—I didn’t…I know you wouldn’t, but I…” Nick swallowed and tried to sort out what he was trying to say, but his thoughts were a jumbled mess in his head. “I don’t know what else I’d do.”

“You really were drugged to the gills when you talked to Kelly, weren’t you?” Paddy smiled a little. “You know what you’d do, Nicky. What you want to do. If I know you, though, you don’t let yourself think about it very often is all. You’re not the type to dwell on things you’ve convinced yourself are impossible.”

Nick huffed half a laugh. “He told you about the cop thing. And the marines.”

“He did. I think you’d be rather brilliant at either, my boy, but I think you know as well as I do that only one of them is an option with your…current ties.”

“Yeah.” Nick sighed and settled deeper into the cushions. “No police department in their right minds would hire me.”

“The marines, though. If you really want to throw yourself into war, I can see you doing well there. If that’s  _really_  what you want.”

Nick pushed through the aches and stings that shuddered across his body as he forced himself to sit up. “You’d really…I could do that?”

For a moment, Paddy watched Nick. “I guess your boy was right comin’ to see me without telling you. You never would’ve come clean otherwise.”

“I would’ve.” That much Nick was sure of. There would have come a point when he couldn’t take it anymore. It probably would’ve been very, very soon. “I just…I wouldn’t have done it now.”

Paddy nodded, accepting his answer as truth. There was one thing everyone knew about Nick—he was painfully honest. “Tell me true, Nicky. Is this what you want?”

This time, with it sitting there on a platter in front of him, Nick didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”

There was no surprise on his face, only resignation, as if Paddy had known the answer before this conversation had started. “I can’t say that I’ll be happy to lose you, Nicky, but I always knew you were too good to keep down in the sewers with me. One day, I knew—I  _knew_ —that you would find a path you belonged on.” He stood and offered Nick a hand, pulling him up and into a hug. “You were never going to spend your life with me. I wouldn’t have allowed it. You were meant for more than this, Nicky.”

Words suddenly became a thing only other people knew. Nick had none. He couldn’t think, all he could do was respond as Paddy hugged him tight and essentially gave Nick his official blessing to walk away from an organization that so very few people left alive.

“Be good, my boy,” Paddy said, patting Nick’s cheek. “Be good and take care of Kelly. I have a feeling you two will be good for each other in the years to come.”

With one last hug and a sad smile, Paddy left.

Nick sat on the couch in silence, staring up at the ceiling. That had gone…okay. It had actually gone  _well_. Paddy wasn’t pissed and Nick wasn’t risking his life and he was apparently on his way toward joining the marines and now all he had to do was tell Kelly that he’d be leaving Boston for God-knows-where to place himself in the line of fire in the name of Uncle Sam and the American Flag.

Shit. It was par for the course with his life, he supposed. One step forward and fifteen back.

This was why he’d never let himself have nice thing. He always lost them.

No way could he expect Kelly to wait for him for years. For whatever snippets of time he spent stateside and not on a base far away from Boston. No way could he expect Kelly to come with him, either. Like, legally. It wasn’t going to happen. Kelly was a minor.

So now what? Stay in Boston and chip away even more pieces of his soul or leave Kelly behind and rip out his heart?


	24. Chapter 24

Nick had been quieter than usual ever since Kelly had come back to the apartment. He knew what Paddy had come to talk about and he almost physically  _itched_  to ask Nick how that conversation had gone, but he also kinda didn’t want to know. Answers to those questions meant knowing for sure if Nick would be diving back into Boston’s underworld when he could walk without wincing or if he’d be jumping onto a plane off to some boot camp or training base. Kelly didn’t like either of the possibilities and so he swallowed his natural curiosity and refused to ask before Nick brought it up. He’d have to face it eventually. He didn’t have to face it  _now_.

Kelly stirred the chili one more time, testing a small spoonful to make sure he hadn’t over-spiced it. Nick had tried to take over the cooking when he mentioned dinner, but Nick could also barely keep his eyes open when he said it. It wasn’t that hard for Kelly to kiss Nick into submission and plant his ass on the couch.

Since the apartment was so small—and since it seemed like Nick was very unused to guests here—there was no table. When the chili was ready, he brought the bowls over to the couch and curled up as close to Nick as he could get without pressing on his injuries or interfering with his ability to hold a spoon. They watched a college football game that Kelly was barely paying attention to and sat in relative quiet for a long while. Only after Kelly had cleaned up the kitchen and stored the rest of the chili (in the pot because Nick didn’t own any fucking Tupperware), Kelly reclaimed his spot on the couch.

The need to talk to Nick was gnawing at him like a rabid bear, but what he wanted to talk about wasn’t an option. Frantically, Kelly cast a mental line out for another topic of conversation.  _Any_  other topic of conversation. It took a few minutes before inspiration struck.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

When Nick met his eyes, Kelly saw wariness and resignation there, like he knew where Kelly was going with this conversation. Or he thought he did anyway. “Of course.”

“Why the hell did you give me that massive bag of cash when I robbed the store?” He did actually want to know. It had been bugging Kelly for weeks. “I didn’t know it was there and I didn’t want it! Why’d you give up everything?”

Nick laughed, a surprised bark that he seemed to instantly regret releasing. His hand pressed against his ribs, pain obvious in his face, but he was still smiling. “Cause you asked for  _everything_! You said, and I’m pretty sure this is a direct quote, ‘Find a bag and put all the money you have back there inside.’  _All_  the money you have back there. How was I supposed to know you didn’t know about the duffle?”

“Oh.” Kelly blinked at Nick for a second. “Okay. I guess that makes sense.”

“Before you showed back up the next day, I figured someone on our end had run their mouth and revealed the time of the drop and you’d just thought it was too perfect an opportunity to pass up.” Nick reached over and cupped Kelly’s cheek, brushing his thumb along Kelly’s cheekbone. “I’m glad I was wrong about that.”

He shifted again, moving closer as though to kiss Kelly, but then he winced and pulled back. Pushing to his knees, Kelly followed Nick’s retreat, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips, his nose and his forehead. When he pulled back, Nick had a wry smile twisting his lips and he was watching Kelly with fond amusement.

“Don’t laugh at me,” Kelly huffed plopping back down on the couch.

“I’m not.” The corner of Nick’s lips twitched. The smile didn’t last long this time. Nick watched Kelly for a moment, his expression growing more and more serious with every second that passed. “One of us has to bring it up.”

Kelly shook his head and grabbed the remote, clicking away from the game and flying through channels. “We really don’t. Not yet.”

“Kels,” Nick sighed, his hand wrapping around Kelly’s wrist and tugging him closer. In an effort to avoid hurting Nick, Kelly went with it, shifting carefully until he was straddling Nick’s lap with their hands intertwined between them. “Why’d you go to Paddy?”

Adjusting his weight to make sure he wasn’t putting too much pressure on Nick, Kelly pulled one hand free and ran his fingers into Nick’s curls. “You didn’t see your face when you said you wanted out, babe. You looked terrified and lost and I just…you started trying to cover that all up within a couple of minutes and I knew you weren’t going to say anything to him yourself. If I didn’t do it, you’d’ve gone back and it would have killed you.” Kelly shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe not literally, but the you you are right now? That guy wouldn’t have survived if you went back to work for him.”

Nick slid his hands around the backs of Kelly’s thighs, squeezing and drawing him closer. Up on his knees like this, Kelly actually got to look down at Nick for once. When Nick tilted his chin up, Kelly bent down to kiss him. The kiss stayed soft and almost sweet and the whole moment felt fragile, like the smallest change could shatter their world completely. Because it had to eventually, right?

Nothing lasted forever.

When they separated, Nick closed his eyes and Kelly stayed bent over him, resting his forehead against Nick’s. It was only a few seconds before Kelly felt Nick exhale heavily.

“Paddy let me go,” Nick whispered. His eyes opened and he watched Kelly’s expression with carefully scrutiny. “He gave me his blessing to leave if that’s what I wanted.”

Kelly managed to keep his grip on Nick relaxed, but he couldn’t keep the tension from gathering in his body. “Do you want to leave?”

He hesitated for a split-second, like he knew there wasn’t really a right answer to this question. “I could go to school, maybe? Get a regular job and save up for classes in the fall. Go study history or something like that.”

Nodding, Kelly let his hands wander, tracing the lines of Nick’s face and his throat and his shoulders, memorizing everything because he couldn’t quell the fear that he wouldn’t have the chance to do this for much longer. He wanted to jump on this option and shove Nick into it. It would keep him close and it would keep him safe and it would keep him clean, but he remembered the look on Nick’s face when he talked about being a cop or a marine. There wasn’t even a tenth of the certainty or intrigue or light in Nick’s eyes when he talked about college and a job. Nick would do it if Kelly asked him to—that much he was sure of—but would it really be what was best for Nick?

“What would you do with a history degree?” Kelly made himself ask.

“I don’t know. Teach?” Nick shrugged and ran his hands up and down Kelly’s sides.

“And deal with teenagers for the rest of your life?”

Nick smiled. “Maybe not. If I go through a Ph.D. I can teach college. Or work for a museum or something.”

“Yeah, maybe. Is that something you actually  _want_ , though?”

The smile faded and Nick’s hands tightened on Kelly’s hips. “I don’t want to leave you.”

“I don’t want you to leave.” Kelly smiled sadly and kissed him, a slow, lingering kiss. How was it that a week ago Kelly had never even considered kissing Nick and now he couldn’t imagine living without it? “I _don’t_  want you to leave, but I don’t want to be the only reason you stay either, Nicko. I don’t want you to find something that will just be a poor substitute for what you actually wish you were doing.”

“It wouldn’t be a poor substitute,” Nick insisted, his grip tightening so much Kelly was sure there’d be bruises there later. Kelly relished the thought. “Not if I got to see you every day.”

“Sweet as that is, it wouldn’t be enough. You need something else, something you actually want to do or you’re going to drive both of us crazy.”

Nick’s eyes narrowed slightly. “We met less than a month ago and you think you can psychoanalyze me?”

“Yes.” Kelly nodded, keeping a completely serious expression on his face through sheer willpower alone. “You’re not that complicated, babe.”

“Asshole,” Nick muttered, the smile and the light in his eyes turning the curse into an endearment.

“Get used to it.”

Nick sighed. “You know that cop isn’t really a choice, right? Not right now. Not coming straight off of two years working for Paddy.” 

Swallowing hard, Kelly nodded, calming himself a little by digging his fingers into Nick’s curls and gently pulling them straight. “Marines or bust.” He’s known it was coming—hell, Kelly had been the one who  _pushed_  this to happen—and the words still crawled up his throat like knife-wielding spiders. It took far too much concentration to force a smile onto his face. “Well, hey. I was going to join the Navy, remember? I bet if we both found some strings and pulled, we could end up stationed at the same base. Or at least in the same country.”

Nick’s smile was just as forced as Kelly’s. “Maybe by the time you’re old enough to enlist, I’ll have some strings to pull.”

Of course Nick had to remind him of the one major stumbling block to Kelly’s plan. There was still slightly more than a year before he’d be eighteen, but Kelly’s birthday was coming up. He’d be seventeen and, if he got his GED and permission from his guardian, he could join the Navy now. He wouldn’t have to wait behind and fret while Nick was off in another corner of the globe. He could be there too. They might even be able to request the same station or deployment. It was a long shot, but the chances of that happening were a lot greater than the chances of being able to see Nick more than a few times a year if he left and Kelly stayed behind.

Not wanting to say anything before he figured out exactly how feasible this plan was, Kelly kissed Nick and let the conversation drop.

“Mind if I stay here tonight?” Kelly asked when they finally pulled apart.

From the way Nick’s hands tightened on Kelly, Kelly could almost believe that the possibility of Kelly having to leave had never even crossed Nick’s mind. He swallowed and shook his head. “I’d like it if you did, but Mara might get mad.”

“I think she’d be a little more than shocked to see me there tonight,” Kelly whispered, tracing Nick’s cheekbone with the pads of his fingers. “She knows someone needs to be here to make sure you don’t hurt yourself.”

Nick rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. “I’ve been taking care of myself for a long time, Kels.”

That wasn’t new information to Kelly and the repetition of it didn’t make Kelly change his mind in the slightest. “That’s exactly why you should let someone else do it for a little while, okay?”

There was a brief moment of no-I-should-do-this-myself flash across Nick’s face, but then he visibly relaxed, giving up the fight and giving in to Kelly. “So, what now, babe?”

Kelly grinned and started talking about picking a movie and what they’d do for breakfast tomorrow, but most of his brain was focused on other things. On more long term plans than what they would do for the next few hours.

First, Kelly had to help Nick heal. Then, he had to study like hell for the GED because he had a plan and now he had to figure out how to put it into action. 


	25. Chapter 25

It had taken Nick five days to convince Kelly that he was well enough to take care of himself while Kelly went to school. He shouldn’t have been surprised that Kelly had only acquiesced because he’d found a replacement babysitter.

“Your boyfriend is a persistent little shit, you know that?” Ty grumbled as he stalked into Nick’s apartment.

“That fact is beginning to dawn on me, yeah.”

“You sure you’re ready to put up with him long term?” Even as he asked the question, Ty smirked as if he knew the answer. Nick didn’t do half-assed. With anything. All of his previous relationships had lasted a day, max. No one had been able to keep him around longer than that, but now that he had Kelly Ty knew Nick wouldn’t be letting go any time soon. If ever. He was in it for the long haul and they both knew it.

On another day, Nick would have rolled his eyes and bitten back at Ty with something sarcastic, but today he couldn’t quite manage it. Ty needed to know everything, especially since, once upon a time, it hadn’t just been Nick’s plan, it had been  _theirs_.

“Sit down, Ty.”

Immediately, Ty’s expression darkened. “The last time you said ‘sit down’ like that you told me you were joining the mob.”

Nick glanced at the other end of the couch and back at Ty, completely willing to wait his friend out.

Ty grumbled as he stalked to the couch and threw himself onto it. “If you tell me you’ve become Paddy’s second-in-command or some shit I am fucking disowning you, O’Flaherty.”

“I quit.”

Ty blinked at him. “You quit. You quit  _what_?”

“The mob. Paddy. All of it. I quit.”

“You  _quit_? Can you  _do_  that? It’s not a fucking temp job, it’s the Irish mob!”

“I’m aware, Tyler.” Nick sighed and settled in for a long conversation.

Slowly, he told Ty the whole story—what Kelly had done that first night Nick was in the hospital, how Paddy had been waiting when he got back to his apartment, and how Paddy had given Nick his blessing and an honest-to-God out.

“Wow.” Ty shook his head, rubbing the back of his neck. He looked a little shocked, but mostly pleased. “I wasn’t sure I’d see the day, Lucky. I honestly was starting to think I’d be standing over your grave before you ever walked away from that life.”

Nick thought about where he might be headed in the next few years. “You still might end up standing over my grave.”

Ty nearly sprang to his feet, his entire body rigid with tension. “ _What_? Why? Are you sick? What happened? Why’d they let you out of the hospital if you’re sick?!”

“Paddy only gave me a pass out because Kelly told him I had a plan and somewhere else to go. I was drugged and I told Kelly about the marines and now…” He shrugged and tried to play the whole thing off. “The paperwork is already in motion. I sign everything as soon as I’m healed and can pass a physical.”

“Holy shit.” Ty’s eyes were wide, but most of the frantic tension had melted out of his body. “You’re doing it? You’re enlisting?”

Nick nodded slowly. “It’s the only thing I can think of. Being a cop isn’t exactly an option. Too many of them know I worked for Paddy—I mean, come on. Who would trust me in that department except Paddy’s fucking snitches?”

“Hmm.” Ty’s lips were pursed and he followed up the noncommittal noise with a sideways nod-shrug thing. It didn’t matter. Nick already knew his feelings on the subject. “We were supposed to enlist together, asshole.”

“Yeah, but we were kids when we made that promise, Ty. I’m not going to hold you to it now.” The wheels inside Ty’s head were spinning like mad—Nick could practically see it—but he didn’t seem inclined to share those thoughts yet. Nick leaned forward, resting the non-bandaged parts of his forearms on the unbruised spots near his knees. “Life happens, Ty. I fell in with Paddy. You found Zane.”

“I found Zane and now  _you_  found Kelly. What about him? How’s Kelly taking this?” Ty asked.

“Well, mostly. I mean, he  _is_ the one who started this shit. He went to Paddy.” Nick was still trying to process Kelly’s reaction, actually. Sometimes it seemed like he was on the verge of crying and begging Nick to stay while in other moments he seemed to be honestly okay with the whole thing. “He’s actually already been thinking about the Navy because they’ll pay for everything and train him to become a corpsman.”

“A doc, huh?” Smiling a little, Ty nodded. “Yeah, I can see that. Well, that’s good then. If he’s planning for the same career track then he probably gets it.”

“Yeah.” Nick rubbed his hand over his hair, trying not to longer on the sadness he caught in Kelly’s expression sometimes or the moments of weirdness there had been over the last couple of weeks.

Ty tilted his head slightly. “There’s something else. What is it?”

Sometimes Nick hated it that Ty knew him this well. “I keep getting the feeling that there’s something he’s not telling me. Something big.”

“Like I’m-secretly-an-alien big or I-forgot-to-tell-you-I-borrowed-your-car big?”

“Somewhere between the two. He just…he gets cagey when we start talking about his senior year. It’s almost like…” Nick swallowed and closed his eyes for a second, trying to stuff down the fear that had been building for the last five days. “It’s almost like he doesn’t expect to be here for his own senior year.”

“Be here like in Boston or be here like…” Ty looked nervous, like he wasn’t sure if he wanted to finish the sentence. He did anyway. “Here like alive?”

“I don’t know.” Nick practically growled as he released the frustration of the past few days. “Both. Either. I can’t tell and I don’t fucking like it.”

“Yeah, no shit.” Ty nodded, eyes wide and expression completely serious. “I’d kick the shit out of Zane and make him tell me what the fuck was up if he started talking like that.”

Nick snorted. “I’d rather not resort to beating the truth out of my boyfriend.”

 _Boyfriend_. The word still felt strange to say.

“I guess it’s a little early in the relationship for that,” Ty conceded, a wry smile on his face. “I think the kid’d put up a hell of a fight, though.”

“Me too,” Nick said, smiling back. “He’s stronger than he looks.” Especially since he’d been eating more than usual in an effort to make  _Nick_ eat more than usual. Kelly was starting to put a little bit of weight on his bones and it looked good.

“Yeah.” Ty’s expression was somewhere between impressed and distressed. “I’ve seen him in action, man. I know.”

Well, that explained the strange look in Ty’s eyes. Nick remembered that day with the same mix of emotions. When he thought about Kelly, though… Nick smiled. “He was incredible, wasn’t he?”

“Fucking badass,” Ty agreed. “He’ll do well in the military, I think, but you—” Ty glared and stuck his finger in Nick’s face “—you. I am not okay with you pulling a fast one like this on me.” He looked like he wanted to smack Nick, but the blow never came. “We were supposed to enlist  _together_.”

“I didn’t plan it like this just to fuck with you, Tyler!” Nick sighed. “Trust me, I’m still trying to catch up. This was not the way I saw my year unrolling.”

Ty glanced down at the bandages wrapping Nick’s forearm, his face losing a little bit of color. “Yeah, I know, man, I just…I never thought I’d have to send you off on that bus alone, you know?” Ty picked at the threads poking out of a small hole in the knee of his jeans, his eyes skittering from Nick to the TV to the blank white walls. Nick just waited Ty’s fidgeting out until Ty met his eyes again. “You sure about this, Nicko? Is this what you actually want to do?”

“Except for the leaving you guys and Kelly behind part? Yes.” That much Nick knew. He really couldn’t go back to Paddy now that he’d seen the light at the end of the tunnel. Even the college idea he’d proposed to Kelly didn’t hold much appeal except for the location.

“Well, fuck you, man.” Ty was smiling slightly when he said it, taking the sting out of the words.

“Yeah, Ty, I know. Love you too.”

And then, just like that, Ty let it drop. They watched moves and played video games on Nick’s system and ordered pizza and spent the day doing not much of anything, something they hadn’t done in a very long time. What struck Nick the most was the fact that, all in all, that conversation had gone a helluva lot better than Nick had expected.

 _Hallelujah_ , he thought, glancing at his notoriously temperamental best friend.

He could only hope the rest of his time between now and the bus to LeJeune passed as easily.

***

It was midnight when Nick’s phone rang. Ty’s name flashed on the screen.

“I’m going with you,” Ty said as soon as Nick answered.

“Where?”

“The marines. I’m enlisting if you are, you dumb shit.”

“ _What_? Ty, no. You can’t be serious.”

“Why the fuck would I joke about this?” Ty asked. “I talked to Zane and my parents and get over it because it’s happening and I will be on that bus right next to you or you aren’t fucking going, you hear me?”

“There’s no way Zane is okay with this.”

Finally, Ty hesitated. “He’s not thrilled, but it’s not like he didn’t know this was something I always thought I’d do. He’s a little pissed about how _sudden_  the decision is, but he’s not gonna keep me from going.”

“And a little pissed that he has to find someone else to manage that garage?” Nick asked.

“Yeah, that too.”

For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.

“Ty, please be sure about this. Please don’t do this just for me. You have a life here. You have family and a career and a future. Don’t walk away from all of that just because my stupid mistakes left me without any other attractive options.”

“Walk away?” Ty scoffed. “You talk about it all like it won’t be here when I get back. You think Zane’s gonna leave me? Or not give me a job when I walk away from the Corps? Or that my ex-Marine father won’t approve of the decision?”

“You’ll miss Deuce’s graduation and what if something happens to one of them and you’re not there?”

“What if something happens to  _you_  and I’m not there, Lucky? Do you really think I’d be able to live with that?”

“We might not even be stationed together, moron.”

“Please. Let them  _try_  to split us up.” Ty sounded so sure that it would work out, just like he was sure about everything else working out. He had so little evidence to the contrary that it was easy for him to have that kind of blind faith.

Nick hadn’t been so lucky in his life. “I’m not gonna say I don’t want you there, but Ty…Jesus, Tyler, are you  _sure_?”

“I’ll see you on the bus, O’Flaherty.” 

And with that, Ty hung up. 


	26. Chapter 26

Nick had known how desperately he’d miss Kelly, but it wasn’t until the day that he had to leave that Nick started noticing the specific little habits and qualities and quirks that he wouldn’t have once he stepped on the bus to Camp LeJeune.

The way Kelly fit perfectly under his arm when they walked and how there always seemed to be a bounce in his step when they were together. How bright Kelly’s smile was and how that smile never failed to cheer Nick up. The way Kelly’s skin felt under his fingers and the places Nick’s mind would go when Kelly described—in excruciating detail—the tattoos he planned on getting one day and exactly where they would be. Once Nick stepped on that bus, he wouldn’t have any of that. Not every day.

They sat on the couch in Nick’s apartment, Kelly curled up against Nick’s side with his arms wrapped so tight around Nick’s waist that breathing was becoming a struggle. Nick didn’t complain, though. If anything, he wanted to hold Kelly tighter, at least while he could. There were only a few more minutes before they had to leave to meet Ty and his family at the bus station, but neither Nick nor Kelly seemed inclined to move. Or speak. Or breathe too hard. They both knew they the moment they had was so precious and so fleeting that any change would mean it was over, the smallest shift would mean they had to face the fact that Nick was leaving. Not in the near future. Not tomorrow. Now.

“I changed my mind. This was a horrible idea. Don’t do it.”

Kelly’s words were all spoken in a whispered rush, like they’d been circling in his head at full speed for so long that when they escaped there was no way they’d come out slow.

“I don’t think that’s an option anymore, babe.” Nick kissed the top of Kelly’s head and closed his eyes when Kelly somehow managed to move even closer.

“I know,” Kelly sighed. Turning slightly, he straddled Nick’s lap and kissed him, the embrace somehow sweet and desperately sad at the same time. They were saying so many things without words. Hello and I love you and don’t leave me and I’ll miss you and I hate this and I know and oh God why did we think we could do this at all? Even in that kiss, it seemed like the one word they were avoiding was goodbye.

Kelly was the one who pulled away and Nick was glad that he did. Nick wasn’t sure he could have made himself do it.

“C’mon, Irish. Let’s go before I don’t let you leave.” Kelly stood up and held out his hand. The assistance wasn’t necessary, but in that moment the contact did. It felt critical to Nick’s sanity that he remain in contact with Kelly for as long as possible. He slid his hand into Kelly’s and they both curled their fingers around the other’s, gripping far tighter than they would have any other day.

They didn’t say much as they picked up the single bag Nick was taking with him. He had a few boxes in storage at Ty’s house, but everything else was staying behind, left for the landlord to keep or toss as he saw fit.

Bag over Nick’s shoulder, they both turned at the door, looking back at the apartment.

“I’m gonna miss this place,” Kelly said softly.

“It’s a shithole.” Nick had never been willing to pay an unnecessary amount for housing, even though he could have afforded a little better. He picked the cheapest place he could find in a decent neighborhood.

“Maybe, but it was our shithole for a while.” Kelly glanced up at Nick, shrugging one shoulder. “I’m gonna miss that.”

That much was true. Ever since Nick had come home from the hospital, Kelly had been practically living there. They spent most afternoons and evenings at Mara’s to spend time with the kids and eat dinner, but when Nick left to go back to his apartment Kelly was  _always_  by his side. Nick could never even pretend to not want him there or try to send him back into the house.

“Give it a few years and we’ll have a place again.” It should have sounded like an empty promise—something people said to make someone feel better—but it didn’t feel empty. The ties between them were already too strong and their lives too in-sync for them not to find each other again. It may take a few years—longer than a few years maybe—but it would happen. They would make it happen.

Kelly managed to smile. “Promise?”

Nick nodded and kissed him, a simple, soft kiss. “Promise.”

Some of Kelly’s nerves seemed to settle then and he pulled the door shut behind them, leading Nick to the car with a slow but determined stride. He let Kelly drive since he was leaving the car for him to use while he was gone. Kelly stared at the keys when they dropped into his hand, his fingers tracing the edges of the keyring and his eyes jumping between the shiny metal and Nick. His lips were closed, but his jaw clenched and shifted like he was biting back words by force alone.

Kelly had done this a lot, especially in the last few days, but whatever he thought he wanted to say never seemed to leave his mouth.

“What is it?” Nick finally asked, knowing he wouldn’t get another chance. “You can tell me anything, Kels, you know that.”

He smiled a little. “I know. It’s just…I hate goodbyes.”

Nick was almost certain that wasn’t what he had swallowed back, but he trusted Kelly. If he wasn’t telling Nick something there was a reason. A good reason. Even if it was a reason that only made sense to Kelly.

The drive over was quiet—they didn’t even turn on the radio—and their hands stayed connected the entire time. Nick stared out the window, watching the town he’d spent his entire life in pass by, and traced patterns on the back of Kelly’s hand. Little messages and hearts and “I love you” tapped out in Morse code. Even if Kelly didn’t understand the messages, Nick caught him glancing down at their linked hands and smiling, so Nick kept going.

By the time they pulled up to the bus station, everyone else was already there. Everyone. Ty, Zane, Ty’s  _entire_  family, Kiko, Jack, Lindsay, and Sidewinder.

“It’s a party and no one invited me,” Kelly murmured with a smirk.

Nick snorted and shook his head. The gathering they had here was excessive and loud and fucking perfect. Leaving them behind would be nearly impossible.

Tightening his hold on Kelly’s hand, Nick brought it to his lips, brushing a kiss to his knuckles. “Let’s go face the music, babe.”

For a second Nick thought Kelly was going to clamber over the center console just to avoid letting go of Nick’s hand, but then he sighed and opened his door, reluctantly releasing his hold for only as long as it takes for them to get out of the car and meet outside. This time, though, Nick doesn’t take Kelly’s hand, he tucks Kelly under his arm and holds him close enough to feel each breath expanding his lungs.

“Oh, Nick.” Mara smiled a watery smile as she approached with her arms out. She hugged Nick tight, but carefully, not trying to dislodge his hold on Kelly. “You two keep each other safe, you hear me? I want you both back here as often as possible.”

Nick kissed her cheek, soaking in the warmth of the woman who had served as a surrogate mother for most of Nick’s life. “Yes, ma’am.”

“You call us when you can come home, you hear me, son?” Earl asked as soon as Mara moved away. Placing one of his massive hands on Nick’s neck, he pulled Nick into a tight hug. “And you let us know where they’re shipping—if you can—you so we can get you both what you’ll need.”

“Will do, sir.”

Earl released him and smiled. “You boys do me proud.”

Nick wasn’t sure if it had been an order or a statement of fact, but he nodded anyway. “We’ll try.”

“I know you will, son. I know.”

Kelly squeezed Nick’s hand as Earl walked away, leaving him to face Deuce. Ty’s brother smiled, pulling Nick and Kelly into a hug. “Maybe I’ll see you next year. Save a spot for me on whatever batshit missions you guys get sent out on, okay?”

Nodding, Nick hugged him back. “I’ll do my best, kid.”

As soon as Deuce stepped back, all three Sidewinder guys gathered around, huge grins on your face.

“If you and Ty don’t go Force Recon in the first few years of your service I will be  _highly_  disappointed,” Digger said.

Eli grinned. “The three of us left a legacy there and we fully expect you guys to pick up the mantle.”

“Don’t listen to them,” Owen said, shaking his head but not quite able to hide his smirk. “Run. Run away from Force as fast as you can. Those fuckers are  _insane_.”

Nick smirked. “Sounds like fun to me.”

“Yeah, well, you’re insane.” Owen shrugged and winked. “You’ll fit right in.”

They talked for another few seconds, spouting out tips on who to avoid and where to go on base in LeJeune, but too soon they moved away, leaving Nick and Kelly to say one last goodbye.

Out of all of them, this was the person Nick had been dreading the most. Not because he’d miss Zane more than any of the others but because Zane had the most reasons to want Nick’s head on a pike mounted in front of one of his garages.

He swallowed as Zane approached. “I’m sorry, man.”

Thankfully, Zane smiled. A little bit. “I think one of the only reasons he didn’t sign up straight out of high school is because you weren’t going.” Zane glanced at Kelly and then back at Nick. He wrapped his arms around Nick and pulled him into a tight hug, his lips near Nick’s ear. “Promise me you’ll talk him out of his crazier ideas? Please. Just make sure you both come back alive?”

Nick nodded. “Promise.” Even if Zane hadn’t asked, that was one promise he’d give his life to keep.

Once Zane had moved back to Ty and reclaimed his place by Ty’s side, Nick and Kelly were left almost alone. Everyone was close, but it was like there was a bubble around them, one that blocked out the noise and the pressure of the world and even somehow stopped the seconds that ticked away until Nick’s decisions separated them.

“You gonna miss me, Irish?” Kelly’s smile was impish, but the sadness in his eyes nearly gutted Nick.

He slid his fingers into Kelly’s hair and pulled him into a kiss. “More than I can even tell you.”

“Good.” Nick could feel Kelly trembling under his hands and wished so much that he could make it all better. He couldn’t, though. Not this time.

“I love you, Kels,” Nick whispered. “So much.”

“I love you, too.” Kelly swallowed hard and buried his face against Nick’s neck, holding on so tight he practically lifted himself off the ground to hang off of Nick. Nick could feel Kelly’s breath stuttering in his chest and although his cheeks were dry, Nick knew that Kelly was milliseconds from losing it completely. After a few seconds, Kelly dropped and pulled away just enough to look up at Nick. “I’ll…I’ll write you, okay?”

“You better.” Nick pulled him closer and kissed him hard, releasing him fast because otherwise he wasn’t sure he could. “Be good, all right?”

Kelly nodded and lifted his hand to run his fingers down the side of Nick’s face. “You too.”

They barely said another word—to each other or anyone else—as Nick picked up his bag, nodded one last goodbye to the rest of the group, and followed Ty onto the bus. Nick settled into a window seat in the middle of the bus and his eyes went to the window. Kelly was standing with the three kids around him, all of them clinging to him, but his eyes were on the bus. On Nick.

It took every bit of strength Nick had not to dive back off the bus just to take the pain out of Kelly’s eyes. But he stayed in his seat and stared back at Kelly as the bus’s engines vibrated underneath them and the doors closed with a creak and a  _whoosh_.

“You ready for this?” Ty asked as the bus pulled out of the station and Nick lost sight of Kelly.

“I guess I better be.”

Ty’s response was surprisingly somber. He nodded, his eyes locked on the direction he’d left Zane standing. “Here, here, brother.”

***

**_Four weeks later_ **

Nick stared at the letter in his hand, reading it again and trying to see if it made any more sense the second time around. Kelly was a whip-smart, determined kid, but  _this_? This was insane.

_Nicko,_

_I really wanted to tell you this in person before you left, but there were still too many ways it could fall apart. I needed to wait until I had everything signed and sealed and secured before talking about it too much and jinxing everything. So, yeah. Now I have to do this in a letter._

_Next time you see me, you’ll be talking to PFC Abbott. Maybe even Corpsman Abbott if we don’t see each other for a while._

_The first week of April, I’m heading to Illinois and starting corpsman training. I’m already looking into training for the Marine Force Fleet, too. I’ll let you figure out why. ;)_

_I know that we talked about this and you knew this was what I wanted, but you also thought I had another year before I could join. I’m shaking up your plans (again) and I hope you’re not too pissed that I kept this from you. It was only because I didn’t want_ both _of us to be disappointed if it couldn’t or didn’t happen. The kids are safe, though, especially since Mara and Earl have decided to officially adopt all of us. They’re safe and I have nothing else I can do for them. I couldn’t bring myself to sit back and twiddle my thumbs while you were off risking your life._

_Start looking for those strings, Lucky, because soon enough one of us is going to need to start pulling._

_I love you babe. I’ll see you as soon as I can._

_Write me, asshole, okay?_

❤ _Kels_

_P.S. If you get deployed, don’t get dead or I’ll kill you._

Nick had read it enough to practically memorized by the time Ty found him.

“Whoa. What the hell, man? What’s wrong with you?”

Blinking stupidly at him, Nick handed Ty the letter. Words were still not happening inside Nick’s head.

Concern lined Ty’s face and although he took the letter immediately, he hesitated before reading it. Once he got started, though, he laughed.

“That crazy sonuvabitch,” Ty muttered under his breath.

Nick finally began to smile. “God, he really is.” 


	27. Chapter 27

** Five Years Later **

Nick slammed his fist into the punching bag, imagining his C.O.’s face on it. Fucking asshole had canceled his leave.  _Again_. He’d canceled the  _one_ leave Nick had had in the past six months that had coincided with Kelly’s and fucking hell!

Nick growled and continued to vent his frustrations on the hapless gym equipment.

“I am  _so_  glad I outrank you now. You hit me like that and I got resources now. I can fucking haul your ass to the brig.” Ty’s drawl was distinguishable anywhere. Five years of training and deployments and missions had sharpened the sarcastic edge Ty had always had, but mostly he was the same bastard Nick had grown up with. The same bastard who’d been right when he said that the military wouldn’t split them up. Nick and Ty worked too well together to be spilt up.

Right now, though, Ty was the last person Nick wanted to see. Ty had gotten to see Zane last weekend because his boyfriend had flown in to Jacksonville to visit. They’d barely left Zane’s hotel room the entire time. They’d had 48 hours to reconnect and Nick hadn’t seen Kelly in  _months_.

It wasn’t fucking fair, goddammit!

“Go away, Tyler.”

“Shower and dress, Marine,” Ty said, just the tiniest bit of bark to the words, enough for Nick to know that this wasn’t just his friend Ty talking, this was his Six and this was an order. “You’ve got twenty to get your sorry ass into the west conference room. Clear?”

Growling, Nick slammed his fist into the bag so hard he felt the reverberations into his shoulder and down across his chest. “Oorah, sir.”

Nick didn’t even look at Ty as he stalked toward the locker room, knowing that if he spotted that smirk on his friend’s face he wouldn’t be able to resist punching him. He wasn’t sure what the expression on his face was like, but the few other guys in he saw between the gym and the showers gave Nick a  _wide_  berth. For once he was glad of the reputation he and Ty had gathered. Anyone who tried to talk to him right now was risking their lives. Nick was  _not_  in the mood.

He kept the shower spray cold, hoping it would cool his temper as quickly as it cooled his skin. It did, but what it left behind was almost worse. Anger was easier to deal with than this bone-deep weariness, this aching loss in the center of his chest. Anger he could channel and use. This sadness sat on his chest like an ACME anvil.

Moving on automatic, Nick dried off and dressed, adjusting the folds in the sleeves of his cammies and making sure he dug his belt out of the back of the locker where he’d chucked it earlier. By the time he was ready and moving toward the room Ty had ordered him to, he knew he’d be  _just_  on time.

To keep his mind from spiraling in an unwanted direction, Nick wondered what this was about. Maybe a deployment? Or at least a special short-term assignment. They’d already had a couple of those. He hoped it was something that would keep him busy at the very least. The less time Nick had to think the better.

He reached the conference room and opened the door, stopping suddenly. No one from his team was in here.

A guy in Navy cammies stood in the corner of the room, looking out one of the windows, lounging against the wall like it was as comfortable as an over-stuffed chaise. For a second, Nick thought he had the wrong room, but then something about the way the guy stood, the shape of his shoulders under his uniform and the particular shade of dirty blond close-cropped hair and—holy shit. It couldn’t be. He couldn’t be this lucky.

“Kels?”

Kelly looked up, a slow, seductive smile spreading across his face. “Hey, Nicko.”

Nick’s feet were moving before his brain caught up. In a few quick strides, Nick was across the room, his hands on Kelly’s waist. He picked him straight up off the ground and pinned him to the wall, devouring him like they hadn’t seen each other in months. Because they hadn’t fucking seen each other in months.

Moaning his approval, Kelly wrapped his legs around Nick’s waist. Questions spun through Nick’s head—what are you doing here and how did you get here and how long do I have you and are you okay and did you miss me as much as I missed you?—but to ask any of them Nick would have had to stop kissing Kelly and  _fuck_  that. The questions could wait. Kissing Kelly couldn’t. He felt like if he stopped, he’d stop breathing.

Damn he’d missed this.

“Nick,” Kelly breathed, his hands in Nick’s hair pulling harder than normal.

Nick was used to hearing Kelly say his name a thousand different ways. This wasn’t one of the ways Kelly usually said it while Nick was kissing him. This was trying to get his attention.

“Nick, we’re gonna be late.”

“Don’t care.” Kissing him one more time, Nick shook his head.

Kelly laughed into the kiss. “Yes you do. We both have orders. We’ve got to meet a group on the other side of the complex in five minutes.”

Shit. Nick knew it would take them at least that long to get there if they left _right now_.

“Orders?” Part of what Kelly had said finally filtered through Nick’s lust-addled mind. “What orders? What are you doing here? They canceled my leave. I told you that, didn’t I?”

“Yeah, babe, you told me,” Kelly smiled fondly at Nick.

“Then what are you doing here?”

“I told you. Orders.”

“What orders?” Nick asked again.

Kelly’s eyes sparkled with mischief, an expression Nick had come to  _love_ over the years. For so many reasons. “I don’t know yet. That’s what we’re going to find out.”

Nick narrowed his eyes. His boyfriend may be a lot of things, but liar wasn’t one of them. He’d never been able to lie to Nick. He wasn’t even _trying_  now. But that just meant Nick wouldn’t be able to get him to tell him the truth, either. Not until he wanted to. Kelly was a stubborn bastard.

And, really, Nick couldn’t even pretend to be mad. Not right now. Not when it felt like his whole body was buzzing with butterflies and sunshine at how fucking  _happy_ he was to see Kelly.

“C’mon, Kels.” He eased back from the wall a fraction of an inch, just enough to let Kelly slide down to the floor, but not enough to let him escape. “I guess we better get going, huh?”

“Yes, sir.”

Nick couldn’t have stopped the growl that escaped his throat even if his life depended on it. Kelly this close looking up at him that way with those words on his lips in that tone of voice was just…

Honestly, Nick hated the entire U.S. military at this point if only for the fact that it was keeping them both clothed and occupied for far longer than Nick thought was necessary.

“You gonna let me go?” Kelly smirked up at him.

“No.” Nick leaned down and kissed him one more time before stepping away and taking his first real breath since he’d opened the conference room door. He glanced over his shoulder, glad to see that he’d had the wherewithal to  _close_  said door behind him. “C’mon. Before I change my mind.”

“You’d risk the brig for sex?” Kelly raised his eyebrows, looking impressed. “I guess I should take that as a compliment.”

“Shut up or you’re going to get us both in trouble,” Nick muttered as he stepped away from Kelly and adjusted his pants. Of course Kelly laughed as soon as he saw it.

Kelly leaned closer and pressed a kiss to Nick’s cheek. “I’ll make it better later,” he whispered into Nick’s ear.

“Leave or we’re not going,” Nick warned.

Kelly laughed again—and fuck Nick had missed that sound—and slid his arm around Nick’s waist, tugging him toward the door.

They walked through the halls of the complex like that, Nick’s arm around Kelly’s shoulders and Kelly’s wrapped tight around Nick’s waist. Neither of them worried about what the few people they spotted in the hall might think. Nick was notoriously handsy with just about everyone and officers at LeJeune had gotten used to seeing Grady and O’Flaherty walking together like they were literally joined at the hip. The sight of Nick walking the same way with a guy in Navy cammies wasn’t enough for anyone to take notice of. Even if they had, DADT had been repealed years ago. The only way anyone would have a problem with the fact that Nick and Kelly had been dating for years was if they worked together. The only reason their relationship was even close to being a secret was because Nick had been trying to make that happen for five fucking years.

Kelly reluctantly slid out from under Nick’s arm when they neared the conference room. When he walked in and saw not only his entire team but their C.O. and another officer, Nick’s pulse sped up. His mind had conjured up the image of Kelly  _finally_  joining his Recon team as soon as he’d mentioned orders, but he hadn’t let himself pin his hopes on that panning out. The disappointment would have hurt too much. But now? Now Nick started to let himself hope.

The C.O. looked up when the door opened, something almost like a smile crossing his face when he saw Nick and Kelly. “Oh, good. O’Flaherty found your Corpsman.”

Nick’s heart stopped. He couldn’t breathe. It had happened. It had finally happened.

“Everyone, meet Corpsman Kelly Abbott. He will be the last member of this little bunch of insanity we’ve managed to cobble together here.” The C.O. nodded toward the two empty chairs at the conference table, a silent order to be seated included in the gesture. Kelly’s hand on Nick’s elbow was the only thing that actually got him moving, though. Bastard smirked at him as they walked, calm and completely together. Because he’d had some fucking warning and some time to adjust to the idea of seeing each other every. Single. Day.

He tried to concentrate on the mission briefing, but Nick’s thoughts were all on Kelly and what having him here would mean and how they could make the most of the little bit of downtime they would have together. Kelly could move into the house he and Ty shared with the team and they’d be able to talk without a phone or a computer screen dividing them and holy shit. Nick’s mind nearly shorted out as relief and pure unfiltered joy—the kind he hadn’t even known he was capable of feeling—rushed through him like a drug. It left him feeling dizzy and delightfully unbalanced and all he could do was sit there and hope like hell someone else would be willing to fill him in on everything he’d missed because the briefing was suddenly over and Nick hadn’t heard a word.

As soon as the door closed behind the officers, Ty got up and pounced on Kelly, grinning like a madman.

“You were supposed to be here  _yesterday_ , asshole!” Ty yanked Kelly out of his chair and hugged him tight.

“Flight got cancelled,” Kelly said into Ty’s shoulder. His eyes met Nick’s though and he could still see the sparkle in them.

“You should have driven! You don’t even want to  _know_  how growly O’Flaherty has been for the last twenty-four hours, man.”

“Seriously,” Deuce said as he pulled Kelly away from his brother. He’d joined them a few months back to round out the team. “I thought he was going to skin us alive and barbeque us last night.”

“Oh, look. A family reunion,” Julian commented wryly. Julian Cross had been born in Ireland but became a U.S. citizen when his family moved to the Sates during high school. His Irish accent was still strong, though, curling through his words.

Preston rolled his eyes. “Like you wouldn’t be the same if Cameron showed up.”

Julian and Preston were a lot like Ty and Nick, having spent most of their lives together. He cut a quick glare at Preston—he didn’t like anyone bringing his boyfriend into conversation, not even Preston—but nodded. “Fair point.”

Ty made introductions—since Nick’s brain was still behind by about fifteen steps—and then the team migrated to the rec room nearby. Luckily almost everyone else was out and the place was practically deserted.

They spread out on the couches, Nick making sure he pulled Kelly as close as he could get him without breaking regulations for indecency.

Julian and Preston settled across from Kelly and Nick, sitting almost perfectly ramrod straight in the battered leather armchairs. “So we’re finally meeting your elusive boyfriend, O’Flaherty?”

Only because he knew no one on his team would say anything to risk getting either of them in trouble, Nick nodded, tightening his grip on Kelly. Inside his head, there was still a childishly excited voice screaming “He’s here! He’s here! He’s here!”

“I was beginning to think you were a figment of his imagination,” Preston said to Kelly.

“Maybe he is and we’ve all been dragged into his delusions,” Julian said.

Nick flicked them both off, but he couldn’t keep the smile off his face.

Preston nearly laughed as he blew a kiss to Nick and studied Kelly’s uniform. “At least now we know  _why_  you’ve been such a big secret.”

“Secret?” Kelly looked at them both like they were insane. “Didn’t you both pop up in the background of our Skype chat last month? And add glitter to his last letter to me when he wasn’t looking? And—”

“Well, it was  _supposed_  to be a secret,” Julian said with exaggerated patience. “We just weren’t very good with playing along.”

“You never are,” Preston agreed amicably, completely ignoring the exasperated glare Julian sent his way.

“Traitor.” Julian sunk deeper into the armchair, finally slouching. “You’re _supposed_  to be on my side.”

“Am I?” The expression on Preston’s face hovered somewhere between perplexed and smug. “Must have slipped my mind.”

Julian grabbed an apple someone had left on the end table and chucked it at Preston’s head. “Nothing slips your mind!”

Preston easily dodged the apple, an easy smile on his face.

As they fell into their usual bickering, Kelly looked up at Nick. “Are they always like this?”

Nick looked into Kelly’s changeable blue-green-gray-gold eyes, still a little in shock that he was here, that Nick could look into those eyes and watch every little shift of expression that flashed through them. It took him a second to remember what Kelly had asked.

“Uh, yeah. This is pretty much business as usual.”

Kelly grinned, wide and carefree and happy. “Awesome.”

Deuce collapsed into the last empty chair, dropping a six-pack of beer on the coffee table with a grin. “Seems like the day deserves a toast.”

“Are you serious?” Julian asked, eyeing the bottles of Sam Adams with mild distaste.

Deuce popped the top of “Shut up and drink it, Jules.” 

“Well, you could have made a worse choice,” he allowed as he picked up one of the beers.

“Yeah, but then I would’ve had to drink it.” Deuce winked and handed Ty a beer before opening two for Nick and Kelly.

“To the final member of our team,” Deuce said, lifting up his bottle.

“To found families,” Ty said, smiling a little bit but surprisingly serious.

“To somehow surviving the years I’ll be stuck with you assholes,” Julian added.

“Don’t worry,” Kelly said, smirking. “I always patch up my Marines.”

“Here, here, Doc.” Nick smiled, taking a risk and pressing a kiss to Kelly’s temple as everyone raised their beers and drank.

For a minute, the room was calm and almost quiet. Their team was complete—finally—and they all knew what they would mean. Training and then, probably sooner rather than later, a mission and a deployment. Overseas. Constantly on the move. Long term. Because that’s what they had trained for. For now, though, for now they were just guys with an afternoon off and a beer.

“So this is it, huh? I join the marines to meet new people and see the world and I get stuck with  _you three_?” Deuce shook his head, but the teasing glint in his eyes was obvious. “This is some bullshit.

“This is what you get for following your brother everywhere he goes,” Ty glared, poking his finger into Deuce’s face. “Your decision. Your fault.”

“Shut up, idiot. You love having me here and you know it.”

“If only because then I have someone to blame when shit goes wrong,” Ty muttered with an ill-concealed smirk.

“Have we figured out a name for this little band of thieves yet?” Deuce asked with a grin.

“We need a name?” Julian asked, looking incredibly incredulous.

Beside him, Preston just look resigned. “You’re all lunatics and I want nothing to do with this.”

“Don’t listen to him, he’ll vote if he needs to,” Deuce said, brushing the comment off.

“We don’t need a name,” Kelly said from his spot next to Nick. “We already have a name.”

“We do?” Ty blinked at him. “Since when?”

“Since five years ago, moron.” Kelly glanced at Nick, a smirk on his face. “We’re Sidewinder.”

Ty laughed, not arguing the pronouncement at all.

Maybe Ty found it amusing, but Nick got it. He got the ties to home and the ties to the people who had helped bring them together and the ties to the marines who had come before them. He got that Kelly was binding the family they’d found in the military with the one they’d left behind at home. He got that the name would always make Kelly smile when he heard it and anything that did that could only be a good thing.

Nick had made himself a family in the Marines and, for the second time in their lives, Kelly had found his way into it. This time, though, absolutely nothing was going to separate them.

 Really, there was only one thing Nick could say in response. “We’re Sidewinder.” 


End file.
